Will the Circle Be Unbroken
by RaymondtheA.I
Summary: An adaptation of BioShock Infinite into a less of a shooter and more of a hard-boiled detective novel, inspired by this BuzzFeed article /josephbernstein/why-is-bioshock-infinite-a-first-person-shooter?utm term .y1obL9OE CW: War, racism, child abuse. The story (set in 1912) contains characters expressing prejudices common at the time. These views do not go unchallenged in the text
1. Chapter 1: The Lighthouse

_**Will the Circle Be Unbroken**_

By RaymondtheA.I.

Adapted from _BioShock Infinte_ by Ken Levine

"The mind of the subject will desperately struggle

to create memories where none exist…"

 _Barriers to Trans-Dimensional Travel,_

 _-R. Lutece, 1889_

 **Chapter 1 – The Lighthouse**

"Are you going to just sit there?"

"As compared to what? Standing?"

"Not standing. Rowing."

"Rowing. I hadn't planned on it."

Even over the wind, the rumble of the sea, the millions of tiny splashes with each small but thundering raindrop on the surface, the man and the woman chattering away were loud and clear. It felt to Booker, who sat alone in the back of the small dingy, as though the other two had been mouthing off at one another for the entire ride. They had been at it so long, and their conversations so elliptical that the ride seemed to stretch on and on as Booker tried to recall where the argument had started before he could even remember how long the ride had taken. He on the other hand hadn't said a word and intended to keep it that way.

"And why is that?"

"Coming here was your idea."

"My idea?"

The two of them were a man and a woman. One of them was named Lutece, but Booker had forgotten which one. The low-key argument had blended their voices together in his mind. It definitely didn't help that they sounded exactly the same. At first Booker thought it was merely their British accents and he was just being prejudiced. But no, they really did sound too much alike. Everything from the cadence to the way they felt they had to respond to the other's insinuations, it was obvious way neither of them could quit. They had to be twins or something.

"I've made it very clear that I don't believe in the exercise."

"The rowing?"

"No. I imagine that's wonderful exercise."

"Then what?"

"The entire thought experiment."

Booker stared off, trying to find the coast of Maine through the fog. It could have been daytime for all he knew. It was gray enough. Some sunlight had to be lighting up the bottom of those clouds, even as they poured down this torrent. Booker shivered in his boots. His socks and toes seeped with moisture. If he were a younger man, one who had seen less horror in this life, he would have been scared to die from the boat being overturned by the wind, or the water filling out the bottom. But Booker just shivered, wracking his brain to see if he could find that long ago mistake, discarded away in his sorrows, that had led him to getting on this boat and following these two to the lighthouse. Nothing came. If he tried any harder to pin it down, Booker worried he might find something trivial, almost innocent – something that would paint himself as a hapless victim in all this. More than he deserved.

"But one does not partake in an experiment knowing that it has failed." Without breaking from her conversation, the woman turned around and shoved something into Booker's hands. Before he could ask what it was she was back facing the man and locked into the argument again, remaining eerily tranquil the whole time.

In the faint light of boat's lantern, Booker examined a wooden box, lacquered with an embossed set of letters set into a small copper plate. The letters looked scratched out, rusted, but he could make out a date: 1910. Only two years old and it was already crumbling. _So much for the miracles of the industrial age,_ he thought. Lifting open the lid, Booker found a photograph in the shadows. The wind nearly plucked it away, but Booker quickly grasped in his calloused hands. Once the box fully was opened, the sounds of the fellow travelers fell hushed on Booker's ears. He could only focus on making sense of what the contents meant together. A postcard was taped inside, with an illustration of some kind of golden cherub. A pistol sat in the center. _That'll work_ , he thought. Finally, he held up the photograph in the dim light. In faded black and white, he saw a girl. She looked roughly fourteen, facing away from the camera with a giant bow in the back of her dark hair. Scrawled in the corner of the photograph, Booker read: **ELIZABETH**

As he slid the photograph back in the box, he saw there was more written on the back. He pulled it back to give it a skim: **BRING TO NEW YORK UNHARMED** Good thing he had the pistol.

"Can we get back to the rowing?"

"I suggest you do or we're never going to get there."

"No. I mean I'd greatly appreciate it if you would assist."

"Perhaps you should ask him. I imagine he has a greater interest in getting there than I do."

"I suppose he does. But there's no point in asking."

"Why not?"

"Because he doesn't row."

"He doesn't row?"

"No. He _doesn't_ row."

"Ah. I see what you mean."

Up ahead, Booker could see a small pier breaking through the fog. Soon the lighthouse was in full view. It was a plain thing, but for Booker, coming in from a world of gray expanse, the way it stood so boldly against the storm made it feel like the tether it was made to be, before the years of use had made it something mundane.

The boat pulled up next to the pier. A net hung across the tip of it in the same way a curtain might hang over a window. Booker, along with his crewmates, leaned out of the boat to grip on to the net and pulled the boat closer in, until he came face to face with a firm, wooden ladder.

"Well, go on, then," said the woman.

Gripping the box under his arm, Booker hoisted himself onto the ladder, trying not to slip on the rain-slicked wood. Once he got his footing on the pier, he turned around to see the boat already in the distance. He thought of calling out, but sure enough, they were already talking to each other, loud and clear over the sound of the sea.

"Shall we tell him when we'll be returning?"

"Would that change anything?"

"It might give him some comfort."

"At least that's something we can agree on."

For all the annoyance, Booker silently wished them a safe travel back to the coast, or whatever adventure they were onto next. It was an odd, familiar feeling. He didn't know exactly where he was going. He only knew that the answer was in the lighthouse.

Maybe there was someone waiting to meet him inside. After getting off the pier and onto concrete, Booker broke into a run. He was fed up with this rain, exacerbated by the bleak sights of the world around him. He trudged up the stairs of the lighthouse, spiraling him around half the island and giving him another view of gray and wet in every direction. Coming up on the door, he was about to rip it open when an old instinct crept up on him. _New territory is always hostile,_ Slate was fond of telling him, _if it's not housing enemies you already have, then the locals are hostile to anyone who comes storming into their home unannounced._ Even the Injuns respected Slate for thinking like that. Booker gave a few loud knocks instead.

"Ah, excuse me? It's Booker DeWitt. I guess you're expecting me…"

Reaching for the handle, he noticed one last set of writing, this one a post nailed into the wood. 

DEWITT—

BRING US THE

GIRL AND WIPE

AWAY THE DEBT

 **THIS IS YOUR**

 **LAST CHANCE!**

Booker heaved the door open and stumbled into the lighthouse. The door, lighter than he expected, swung away, and he would have fallen on his face if the floor hadn't been so dry. Indoors at last, he realized just how sopping wet the journey had left him. Every part of his clothes weighed him down with water. The remnants of the rain soaked through his hair and dripped from his nose, chin, and fingers. An old memory, something out of the long drowned away days of the last century, crept on his mind. Sunlight, the robed man in the river, his hand outstretched, calling the people forth – "Of thy sins, shall I wash thee." Booker wrung out the edge of his vest and pulled his shirt from his waistband, letting the water spill over the floor. _Good luck with that one, pal_ , he thought.

The bottom floor of the lighthouse was dim. Some faint light came from a candle in the corner. Judging by the amount of wax remaining, someone had to have been here within the last hour. Light was coming in from above too, as the sound of crackling electric light trickled down from above. Across the room was a spiraling metal staircase.

"Is anyone here?" Booker called up the stairs. "Hello? I'm ready."

Up the stairs, the light grew brighter, along with the crackle and hum of the electric current. There was something else, too – a scratchy echoing noise, and as he made it to the next floor, Booker realized it was music coming from an old phonograph.

The next floor felt lived in. A cot sat off on the far end, flanked by a grandfather clock and a dresser. Hanging on the wall, just beyond the staircase, was a map of the United States, covered in pins. Between the pins someone had tied a mass of string, going all around from New Mexico to Maine and circling back to Florida, all in the shape of a rhombus. The phonograph sat on another table, cranking out a trio of men singing, "Old Time Religion." And on the far end, a sink and an oven plugged into the wall with a large pipe.

Finally, there was a desk, covered with stacked books and a typewriter. Booker decided he needed to take a moment. Judging by the room he lived in, whoever was meeting Booker didn't seem the kind of man who would sneak up on a guest and cause any harm. Sitting down, he slid the box out from under his arm and sprawled its contents over the desk. After taking a minute to wring out his water logged socks and vest, he folded the postcard and the photo of the girl into his pockets once he was sure they were at least dry enough. He slipped the pistol into his holster, which he wore all the time now, less out of necessity and more because he felt naked without it. Out of the box tumbled a large key, with something that looked like china embedded into it, which he stuffed into his pants pocket. After removing everything, Booker found one last piece of paper taped to the bottom. There was no writing on this one, not even a photograph or a copied painting, but just some crude drawings: a scroll, two keys, and two cutlasses. Booker shrugged, but he still had room in his pockets. He left the empty box on the desk.

Nearing the next staircase, Booker stopped for a moment to stand close to the oven. He contemplated turning it on and getting a little dryer, when he felt something under his foot: a fruit. Not exactly clear what kind, but it was surrounded by others. In fact, there was a lot of mess concentrated just at the foot of these stairs: a teakettle propping up an overturned frying pan, silverware all over the floor, sitting amongst a field of shattered plates. It seemed like a horrible spill, but in in the gray light coming through the window, Booker saw a table lying on its side. It looked more like a struggle. He hurried up the stairs as quietly as he could, avoiding pieces of paper and open books strewn about the metal steps. The mess only grew as he climbed higher. At the top, there was a small bookcase, dangling between the third floor and the staircase. Booker took to the opposite side, carefully.

The next floor was dim, its ceiling obscured by ropes and buoys dangling from above. Only one electric light hung on the wall, illuminating a man sitting in a chair. Below him, a trail of blood collected around his pale, lifeless feet. The blood was dry, both on the floor and on the man's trousers. He had a burlap bag over his head, the obscured face a deep red. Walking to the other staircase, keeping his distance, Booker saw the sign strapped to the man's shirt:  
 **DON'T DISAPPOINT US**

Booker ran up the last set of the stairs and into the wind and rain and across the railing of the lantern room. His stomach convulsed but his hand stayed on his pistol.

"Come out!" said Booker. "It's DeWitt! I know you're here!" He circled every inch of the railing, around the whole perimeter of the lantern room. Nobody was there. He whipped around and stuck his pistol straight against the windows of the lantern. But even past the misty glass, he saw no one. Again he heard Slate yelling in the back of his head: _Press on. The enemy is always advancing! Are you just a tin soldier?_ Booker had been trying to shake the old bastard's voice from his mind for twenty years, but most of time it seemed more that he had forgotten how to discard the memories. More than the blood and the fear, it was his commanding officers screaming charges, his Spartan belief in the glory of it all that Booker hated but stuck with him nonetheless, because sometimes it was the only thing that forced him to push forward.

Booker stepped around the perimeter, slowly this time, looking for a door. It seemed as though there were only windows. All that stood out were the bells hanging from the lantern room's scaffold. They hung low enough that Booker could grip them without ringing them. Taking one in his hand, he saw a carving on its shell: a long thin triangle, almost like a pointed stick. Was it a knife or a cane or even a sword?

 _Wait a minute, that card…_ he remembered. He pulled out the card – the one with the drawings – and inspected it. One scroll. Two keys. Two cutlasses. Booker held two more bells before him: a scroll and a key. It was worth a shot. He pulled scroll-bell until he heard a note ring out. He gave two tugs to the key-bell and heard something a little higher. With two more pulls of the sword-bell, he got two more notes, lower now.

But still there was only the rain and the wind. No answers. Booker crumpled the card and tossed it into the sea. _Now what?_ Then suddenly he heard a foghorn bellow out. But not from a coming boat. It seemed to be coming from all around him. Then another fog horn burst. The world went quiet and then the foghorn bellowed again. Then another, lower and deeper. And finally the longest burst of all, deep enough that Booker felt the metal beneath him rattle and he almost slipped. The five horns, each a different tone and timbre, Booker realized, were responding to the bells.

Without a moment's delay, the lantern room illuminated, clicked on and off – three, four, five times. All the bells rattled and Booker saw through the windows the lantern rise to the ceiling, pulled up by rods. One of the windows clicked and then hissed open. Booker took a last look at the endless, gray sea, and entered the lantern room.

Where the lantern had been, there was a chair, covered with polished leather but supported by a visible metal frame. He looked about the room. Nothing else. He checked the back of the chair. No sharp edges, no exposed wires. Nothing that looked like it was meant to torture him. But he was still uneasy. _Looks like they expect me to sit in their fancy chair. I've come this far and I've got nothing to lose._ Bracing himself for whatever surprise was around the corner, Booker thought back to the boat, the debts, the mistakes, Slate. And Anna. _Whatever's next, no matter how bad, nothing can get worse_. Booker slid himself into the chair, reclining and took a moment to appreciate the soft leather. _Sow what now-_

Two manacles snapped into place around his wrists. _The hell?_ Steam rushed out from the floor around him and beyond the veil of moisture the metal plates of the floor unlatched and opened up. As Booker struggled, a metallic voice that seemed to come from within the floor, crackled out a message.

"Make yourself ready, pilgrim. The bindings are a safeguard."

 _This was a mistake,_ thought Booker as he tried to pry his arms free, but more metal plates rose out of the floor until they encased him completely like a chick in an egg.

 _No, no, no, no, no._ He started yelling out loud to whatever this was. "Get me out of here!"

His metallic egg sealed shut, only a small port window that pulled up before his face. The floor opened from beneath and he fell forward. His legs dangled down, but the manacles kept him strapped into the chair. He felt some weight drop for his side and saw his pistol fall into the gears of the lighthouse.

"Goddammit!"

And though it seemed like the darkness stretched out infinitely beneath him, after a moment a raging fire burst out and lit his little cell. Beneath him looked like four engines spat fire out downward like open boilers.

"Ascension… Ascension…" the metallic voice said. "On the count of five… four…"

The chair rose again and pulled Booker upward, pressing his face against the port window.

"Three… two…"

"No no no no no no no…" Booker said quietly, without panic, because he was ready to face the end.

"One. Ascension."

The world outside Booker's window rushed downward. The lighthouse was gone, and only the sea remained. And the sea and its horizon grew smaller and smaller and fainter and the clouds grew closer and closer until he was caught in the midst of them there was nothing he could make out it at all except the faint reflection of his own petrified face against the glass. The voice kept counting.

"Five-thousand feet. Ten-thousand. Fifteen-thousand."

The clouds broke.

"Hallelujah."


	2. Chapter 2: Both Sinner and Saint

**Chapter 2 – Both Sinner and Saint**

Slowly and methodically, the melody of "Good Old Summertime" played on what sounded like a harpsichord. Each note felt light and a little empty, like air. Booker latched onto the tune like an anchor, so he could tell himself that this was all real. Inside the capsule, felt himself floating as the view outside his tiny window descended softly. His eyes adjusted to the overwhelming brightness of the sunlight, to behold the city in the clouds. So much like a dream it was, from the windmills perched atop buildings to the hot air balloon propelling itself across the city like a motorboat and all the wonders Booker had dreamt about as a boy, the wild promises of traveling shows and the photographs out of the World Fair.

At first glance, Booker didn't think it could be a city, though he couldn't deny entire buildings floating above and amongst the clouds. But they were joined together – even as the sky and the endless drop opened up between them – by rails and cables that wrapped about the buildings like wires instead of railroad tracks.

"Welcome, pilgrim," the voice inside the capsule emitted.

From inside, Booker saw his vehicle descending into the city, past rails and balloons and giant posters he tried to read but couldn't catch full sight of. When he finally came down it was gentle, but the shock of something solid shook him from within and he was panting, and he was panting heavily before he could even realize he was descending further, into darkness, accompanied only by the sound of grinding gears.

Carried down by his capsule as it sank into an array of steel girders, Booker found the only light coming through his window, refracted into many colors. Adjusting his eyes again to the darkness, Booker could make out a gigantic stained glass window set against a mass of steel and stone, carved like a grand cathedral. As he sank further a dim, yellow light grew brighter and brighter. The stained glass window was distant, but for Booker it was enough to find a distinct shape in the mass of swirls and colors: a man, with one of those implacable expressions stained glass figures had, with a flowing white beard, his arm pointed out and upward, his shoulders covered by a gray-blue overcoat that flowed along with his pose of grandeur. Booker thought that it all looked slightly like a geriatric Jesus, and that was probably the exact point of whoever made it.

The light grew brighter and the sounds coming from below began to drown out the grinding of the gears. Most people might have been relieved to hear the choral chant below, so drawn out and lightly annunciated you couldn't actually hear a word. Most people – whether they enjoyed the sound of hymns or not – would simply be comforted knowing that there were others nearby. Not Booker DeWitt.

The capsule landed. This time Booker was ready for it, but he still shook as the vapor hissed and released from the rocket. His manacles snapped off from both his wrists and ankles. Rubbing his wrists, he waited as the door slid open, rising above his head. But before it came to a complete stop and the steam dissipated, he recognized another sound: the slushing and rolling of running water. _Great_ , he thought, exasperated, _of all the things to find more of in the sky_. He nearly felt like smacking himself over the head for so quickly accommodating to that idea: _I'm in the sky_ , like it was no different from any odd job he had been assigned back with the Pinkertons.

The water was thankfully shallow and as he sloshed through the tunnels of this steel church, Booker tried not to think of what was happening to his feet after all this. The tunnels and caverns were well lit with thousands of small candles, like the kind worshippers leave at a saint's statue. The occasional stained glass window brought in a purple- or blue-tinted burst of bright light. Beneath his knees, flower petals clumped together in the water and flowed off in one direction. He followed them, hoping the current would lead him out of this place and into the city. But after two endeavors, following the clumps through unbearably long hallways, he couldn't even find sealed-off drains. Each path only led him to more candles, more stained glass, and long, dark hallways with more choral chants in the even greater distance.

Kicking the water pointlessly, he went to find a dry place to rest. Moving on, it struck him that despite all of this water, there was no stench – not sewage, not algae, not even piss. He cupped his hands and lifted the dripping water up to his eyes. Crystal clear, without even rust from the metal. That meant one of two things: either this place had some kind of purification device, or it was small enough that water never stayed here for very long.

From around another bend, Booker found a staircase, spiraling down into darkness. He stepped down carefully, trying not to slip on the uneven steps. Through his descent, he was flanked by smaller windows, each with a single, familiar icon: cutlass, scroll, and key. At the bottom of the steps, a great chamber opened itself to him, cloaked in muted light. As he waded through the water, he felt it grow deeper and until it had risen above his knees. Finally, he came to a wall. At first, it seemed another barren, featureless wall in this maze of water and glass, but when he placed his hand to lean on it, he recognized the texture of dry stone. More than that, it was a smooth rock, with an even smoother crack bisecting it that he could feel curved precisely. Booker had assumed the whole complex was iron and steel and glass. He stepped away and saw the writing carved into the rock, cut out of the marble bricks inserted into the wall. The inscription was so big, he needed to back out even further to see it all and squint to read the parts that were left in shadows by the candles' dim light. When he was far enough away he found the message, but no answers. Written into the wall, it said: **"The seed of the prophet shall sit the throne and drown in flames the mountains of man."**

 _What the fuck does that mean?_ Frustrated and bracing himself for whatever trap was waiting, Booker reached for his holster, only to remember that his pistol had fallen out back in the lighthouse.

"Is there anybody out there?" Booker called. "I need to find a pathway out."

At first, Booker just listened to the echo of his voice, indistinct and muffled in this watery chamber. Then a call rang out. "This is the path, pilgrim." It sounded like a man, but whoever it was hadn't shouted. The voice was too soft for that. Too much of it came in echoes for Booker to pin down what direction it came from, so he moved away from the wall and called again.

"Where am I?" Booker said.

"Heaven, pilgrim," the voice responded. "Or as close as we'll see, 'til Judgment Day."

Pushing further away from the candles, Booker found the source of the voice. A man stood, patiently and still, against a long flat stretch of wall. Booker realized this was what made his soft voice echo so far. The man wore a white robe, with dampness rising from its bottom. His face hung on the line somewhere between young and old, and he smiled at Booker like he was expecting him. Not him specifically, but perhaps some kind of person he accepted Booker for.

"Follow me," he said, and trudged away toward another opening in the wall. "Don't worry, we're all equals here. There's no initiation for walking the path. Only for committing to it."

"I need to find a way into the city. Do you know the way?" Booker cautiously followed the man, but kept his feet ready to sprint.

"Of course, I do, pilgrim," he said. "And everyone is here for the city. For the new Eden. A last chance for redemption."

 _The inscriptions don't give straight answers. Shouldn't be surprised the people don't_ , thought Booker. Strange as it all was, he had at least gotten his head around what all of this was. Past the crazy machinery and the watery maze, he recognized it as the collection of the same folks who spent their days in the river, calling out for people to be saved. He saw their kind all throughout his life: from the soldiers who lined up Indians and slaughtered them like animals, to the Pinktertons who bashed in the skull of a coal miner – a hard-working fellow, probably no better or worse than any of their fathers, who just wanted to bring home bread and soup – because an old man didn't want to slow down production. All of them, the brutes and killers who surrounded Booker his whole life, the fellows whose work he shared; all of them knew it was wrong, but there were always the ones who kept the crucifix under their uniforms and told themselves they weren't too far gone. He didn't try to lie to himself like that. He knew exactly how far gone he was. He knew it deep down in his soul the moment he felt the sunrise over Wounded Knee. And he openly admitted that he hadn't changed much since then. The only difference was the nightmares.

So when he followed the old man into a tunnel, covered in glowing candles that illuminated the faces of about thirty people, young and old, men and women, all beaming with whatever they told themselves was waiting for them, he saw the same lost souls looking for a way back. He saw it in their deluded faces: people who had been lost like him, but who refused to accept it.

"Praise be to the Lamb, the future of our city!" said the man who had led Booker here. The flock repeated, somewhat clumsily, like they were picking up the words from each other.

Out of the crowd, a woman spoke up. "Preacher Witting," she said to the man, "who's this you've brought into our flock?"

Preacher Witting looked back at Booker, who stood dumbstruck for a moment, trying to decide if it was too dangerous to give away his name. He started to mumble something, but Witting cut him off.

"He doesn't have to give his name if he doesn't want to," said Witting, his eyes fixed on Booker though he didn't exactly address him. "Who we were in the Sodom below holds no bearing in this place." Witting suddenly took Booker's hand and led him to the flock, sticking him between the other pilgrims. A few of them were dressed in white robes, while others just wore soggy versions of their Sunday best. "You see, pilgrim, this is no mere temple for ablutions. These are waters of rebirth. In the words of our prophet: One man goes into the waters of baptism, a different man comes out, born again."

Booker shrugged. No point in playing along, and he wasn't a good enough actor do it anyway. "I just care about getting into the city. I have important business to take care of."

Witting leaned in until his nose nearly crept on Booker's chest – he was significantly shorter. "So hungry for the path, he doesn't see what's required. Don't be led astray in your desires, pilgrim."

 _Just you wait, old man_ , Booker thought.

As Preacher Witting led the flock through the waters, Booker dipped his head into every other chamber they passed, seeing if there was a quicker way out of this maze. Though the water stayed deep, the stream had grown stiller. Some of the chambers opened to completely still water, whose ripples softened the reflections of the illuminated chapels. Booker would catch a glimpse of each one as they moved through the hallways: small but grand houses with large stained glass images. Nearly all of them displayed the man himself, the bearded fellow whose face Booker recognized from when he first entered the place. The woman next to Booker looked young enough to be in finishing school. She was dressed in muddied white and wore that strange variation of nun's wear that looked like a big, dying flower on her head. Her hands were clasped together and she was muttering under her breath.

"Excuse me?" asked Booker, quietly. "What are you praying for?"

The nun smiled up at him. Booker's face remained steeled. "You can't pray _for_ anything. Father Comstock has already given us what we need. We only pray to maintain our spirit to follow his wisdom."

"Comstock?" Booker paused. He thought for a moment on how he could come across as knowing more than he did. "Are there any windows in this place that don't have him plastered over it?"

"A few," she said. "We're coming up on one now."

She slowly drifted away from the flock, toward another chapel. Booker stayed still. "Won't we lose them?"

"Don't worry," said the nun. "I'll lead you back after we've prayed in the Mother's chapel."

The nun pressed forward to the chamber. Booker shrugged and swore that this would be the last time he followed some kooky stranger as long as he was on this job. The chapel was bathed in a dark, purple light. The water was shallow, so the bottom of his legs shivered. He followed the nun to the front row of pews and rolled up his trousers to rub his calves dry. Around the two of them, the chapel was decorated with purple drapes, looking dry as a bone, and candelabras that were driven into the walls and hanging from the ceiling. The ripples of the water shimmered on the illuminated walls. Statues, one on each side of the altar, of a woman praying on her knees, towered before Booker and the nun. Finally, fixed between the statues, in the place where the image of the saint went, was not a stained a glass window but a portrait of the same woman – a bit tame, Booker thought, by the standards of this place. It wasn't messianic, or even grandiose. It looked like some cheap thing you found at a fair: just a woman in a navy petticoat, standing with a slight look over her shoulder, and giving a vacant expression to something outside the frame. Far from a Mother Mary, but farther from the strangest thing Booker had seen all day.

"Love the prophet because he loves the sinner," said the nun, in a tone that indicated she was reciting. "Love the sinner because he is you. Without the sinner, what need is there for a redeemer? Without the sin, what grace has forgiveness? Hail the Mother, Lady Comstock."

The nun turned to face him, catching Booker off guard.

"Why did you come here, pilgrim?" she asked.

"Does this work a like a confession?" he asked. "I can tell you and you won't pass it along to some other guy you work for?" Booker spoke in a coarse tone, the kind of grumbled lilt that was meant to keep people on edge without sounding like you were bluffing. "Except for the big guy, I guess," he added, pointing up.

The nun nodded, which didn't completely satisfy him. But he knew that he wouldn't get information without an exchange. "I came here on a job, to find something for someone else. Someone lost in the city."

"No one's lost in the city," said the nun.

"Yeah, I get it. They're all already found. I've heard it before."

"Do you see yourself as a cynical man, pilgrim?"

Booker didn't answer. It was a loaded question, and even though the nun spoke softly, he heard it as an intimidation.

"If you're here on a job," she continued, "a mission to find something – then you're hoping you can solve a problem. You _believe_ you can solve some problem. A mission is an act of hope." The nun rose and strolled off, as though she expected Booker to follow. "You're not a cynic. You're one who hopes."

Booker snorted. He didn't bother telling her she was wrong and he was just following her to find away into the city. That was the petty insistence of a frightened boy, puffing his chest. He didn't think of himself as a cynic though: just a man with nothing to prove.

Booker and the nun made their way to a massive, well-lighted chamber, sparkling with candlelight that shone off the smooth, still water. Rising from the tides were statues of angels, their hands clasping real candles dripping with wax. More people dressed in white waded through canals on both sides of them. At the end of their canal, the unmistakable hue of sunlight burst from an opaque window. Booker breathed a sigh of relief, but didn't quicken his pace, realizing he needed to move with the others. Taking his time, he finally recognized the hymn that had been echoing in every corner of this metropolis of a church. It was "Will the Circle Be Unbroken."

 _They pick their songs right_ , Booker thought, and hummed to himself, knowingly, _There's a better home awaiting, in the sky, oh in the sky._

Booker and the nun neared the window at the end of the canal, where the familiar voice of Preacher Witting rumbled from behind a crowd of robed worshippers. Beneath the window, which shone daylight over the canals, Booker saw a dark crevice, where the water flowed through a drain in the wall. The drain was tall enough for three men to stand on each other and still not reach the top. There didn't seem to be a door. Even over the draining water, Witting did not need to scream to be heard.

"And every year on this day of days we recommit ourselves to our city, and to our prophet, Father Comstock. We recommit ourselves through the giving of thanks and by submerging ourselves in the sweet waters of baptism."

Booker tried to push through the crowd, thinking that some kind of door or passageway had to be on the other side of this mass.

"And lo! If the prophet had struck down our enemies and not railed against the Sodom beneath us, it would have been enough. If the prophet and just railed against the Sodom beneath us, but not accepted the three golden gifts of the Founders, it would have been enough. If the prophet had accepted the three golden gifts of the Founders, and not prayed for our deliverance, it would have been enough! If the prophet had only prayed for our deliverance, and not led us to this new Eden, it would have been enough! If the prophet had just led us to this new Eden, and not purged the vipers of the – You!"

Booker whipped around instinctively. The crowd had converged their eyes on him. Behind him, the mass had dispersed, so there was a clear path between him and the figure of Preacher Witting, pointing directly at him. Booker looked around, taking advantage of his new view to find the passage out of this place. No door. No tunnel. Above Witting's head yet another inscription. But it was the first one that made sense: **"The path of forgiveness is the only way to the city."**

"Is it someone new!" Witting announced less than asked. "Someone from the Sodom below, newly come to Columbia, to be washed clean before our prophet, our founders, and our Lord!"

Witting turned his hand over, invitingly. Booker panicked for a moment. He was having another flashback, slipping back into another memory and reliving it like a nightmare inserted into the world around him. He shook his head, realizing that this was just an eerie coincidence, so similar to that day at the river, when the man had reached out and offered him the chance to go under. That day at the river, when he made his decision – the afternoon following Wounded Knee.

"I just need passage into the city," Booker said. He was tired, and this place was bringing up more and more bad memories. He didn't feel like keeping up niceties.

Witting chuckled. "Brother, the only way to Columbia is through rebirth in the sweet waters of baptism. Will you be cleansed?"

 _Doesn't seem like I have a choice_ , Booker thought, _it's either this or turn around and get back on the rocket_. He pushed aside the prickling on his shoulders and moved forward into the deep water. Behind him the flock called out: "Reach out, brother." "Glory be!" "Hallelujah."

As he took Witting's outstretched hand, Booker called out over his shoulder, "Hey, I'm just looking to pass through." It didn't come out as aggressively as he thought – more of a nonchalant statement of fact. He was a fighter, not an actor, and despite the occasional burst of resentment, he wasn't one for anger. Anger's not good for fighting.

 _Might as well get it over with_.

Witting shoved Booker back with a jolt, holding him up by his back. Booker almost lost his footing and fell in prematurely. The flock looked out, and Witting called to them, "In the words of the prophet: One man goes into the waters of baptism, a different man comes out, born again. But who is that man who lies submerged? Perhaps that swimmer is both sinner and saint, until he is revealed unto the eyes of man!

"So I baptize you in the name of our prophet, in the name of our founders, in the name of our Lord!" Before Booker was allowed to take a gasp for air he was underwater. Witting hadn't just let him drop, but shoved him down forcefully beneath the surface. Acting on instinct, Booker struggled, wrestling against Witting's hands, which pinned both his back and chest in place. Witting was still railing above the surface, but Booker couldn't hear him over the pumping of the water in his ears and the bubbles pouring from his nose. After a few seconds, his face broke the surface and he gasped for air furiously. He coughed and yacked, as the crowd shouted praises and hallelujahs. Even as Booker tried to bring down his coughing, Witting kept going.

"I don't know brothers and sisters!" He turned his face to directly to Booker's. "But this one doesn't look quite clean to me!" Booker was still coughing, but this time Witting's hand came over his nose and mouth. Booker struggled for a moment to rip it off, but the old man already had him submerged yet again. Panicking, Booker lashed his arms out of the water trying to get a grip on Witting's arm. But his fingers kept slipping and he felt himself being pushed further down, until the light of that huge window shrank into a pinhole. The pumping in his ears grew louder and the bubbles poured from his nose, pressed down by Witting's hand. He wrestled his body from side to side, but only felt weaker as the light faded away completely. Then the water, so pristine and still, rushed down his nose, mouth and into his eyes.

 _The voices bang on the door, sending it nearly off its hinges and him out of his stupor._

 _"Mr. DeWitt!" Again, angrier. "Mr. DeWitt!"_

 _Booker lifts his head from the desk, brushing away the papers from the racetrack. Two empty gin bottles crash to the floor. He's reliving it again, though the memories of that day are hazy: the sweat, the churning in his stomach, and the signs of his failures all around him. Falling out of the desk, he bangs his head on the floor, just inches away from the steel bedframe where his bare mattress withered away. Underneath, he had stuffed the losing cards from the racetrack, and his rusting Pinkerton badge. The banging on the door returns, pummeling against his brain. This whole room is his brain, gathering dust._

" _We had a deal, DeWitt! This is your last chance! Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt! Open this door, right now!"_

" _I told you…" Booker calls out, gasping for air, wanting to scream in fury and remorse, "I told you! I'm not going to do it! Go away!"  
_

 _"We had a deal, DeWitt! Open the door!"_

 _He scurries to the back of the room and tries to force open the window. He wants to smash his head against the glass. But outside the window, there's only pure whiteness. Just like every time, in every flashback. Every time it goes the same. Every time, there is no escape._

" _There's only one way out, DeWitt!" The banging comes back, louder and harder, strong enough that Booker nearly collapses onto the glass. "You've already made the choice! BRING US THE GIRL AND WIPE AWAY THE DEBT!"_


	3. Chapter 3: Lighter Than Air

Chapter 3 – Lighter Than Air

He drew oxygen into his lungs, not so much gasping for air as allowing it to flood him. He nearly fell over, his body limp and his legs crumbling even as they stood. He kept his footing only by the most primitive instinct to survive. He fell into the water again; he would die and the job would never be finished.

Booker DeWitt knew all of this before he could get a glimpse of his surroundings. Blinking the water out of his eyes, he saw that it was bright again, more so than when he first entered the clouds. It nearly knocked him over again from shock and exhaustion when someone grabbed him by the arm and held him steady.

"Whoa there," a crusty voice called, "careful, brother."

Shaking his head like a wet dog, Booker saw that the arm holding him was attached to another man in a robe, and pushed him off.

"Get away!"

Booker splashed around haphazardly, until the water was finally below his knees. With that, he collapsed onto the dry earth, his face in the grass.

"Just leave him be, son," a voice in the distance called. "Remember when you first entered Columbia? Our prophet fills our lungs with water so that we may better love the air."

His body wanted to shut down, but Booker stayed conscious by the fear of reliving the nightmare: going back to the room. _I'll just catch my breath_ , he thought. For a moment, Booker heard Slate giving him an order. _Are you a tin soldier, DeWitt? Don't fall asleep on these plains._

He lay there, stretching his fingers through the grass every so often to remind him that it was really there. There was a stinging in his right hand. At first he assumed it had to be from the struggle, but pulling it closer, his vision coming into focus, he saw the black lines. The back of his hand had been branded with a large, black tattoo – nothing elegant or intricate – two letters: A.D. They must have stuck it onto him while he was unconscious. But seeing it made him remember the pain of the needle tracing through his flesh, and it brought him to alertness.

Standing up and flushing the water from his nose, Booker detected the scent of flowers. He was standing in a garden, and a carefully tended one at that. The rose bushes were trimmed and only appeared at the backs of wooden benches and the bases of statues. Off in the distance, in the small pool from which he had emerged, were three people in robes, kneeling before a statue that looked like Benjamin Franklin in a toga. Booker moved across the grass and under a marble archway to find more worshippers sitting on a bench and holding hands as they prayed. _There's got to be some regular folks in this place_ , he thought. Still, he scolded himself for underestimating them. That was twice now he allowed some innocuous item or person on this job to turn the tables on him. Just 'cause someone seems simple doesn't change the fact that they know the rules here. After getting shoved into a rocket capsule and nearly drowned, he started to realize that the one who knew too little was he himself.

Booker walked through the garden and past the fountains, coming to a wooden door carved up with holy-looking images. He glanced over his shoulder, saw that no one was following him, and shoved it open. An iron-smelling breeze hit him in the face. He swiped at the air around him, finding himself on a stone platform that sank through the air toward an open street. Before him was the city, clear as day. It stretched out like a canyon, floating buildings all around and in the distance, hazy enough to be mistaken for clouds. They were big, stone structures, with windows that made Booker think of Philadelphia, and roofs that reminded him of Louisiana. It was like a chain of islands, with whole neighborhoods flying together, linked to smaller buildings by drawbridges and metal rails. At least three small dirigibles were slowly weaving through the buildings. The breeze was eerily gentle and the air just slightly brisk, two oddities that Booker attributed to whatever miracle machinery was keeping the city afloat in the first place.

Booker's platform came to shore at the end of a promenade and he started moving down it. The promenade was flanked with benches and rosebushes, and – to Booker's relief – regular looking people, dressed in coats, smocks, and bowler hats. The promenade itself was made of paving stones instead of asphalt. Directly in front of him, floating high above on a distance platform, was a statue of the bearded fellow – the one they called Comstock – holding out a cutlass as his cloak erupted out from him like wings.

Booker raised an eyebrow. _Give a man a little bit of power_ …

As he walked down the promenade, Booker reminded himself that he wasn't here to inspect the city. He reached into his vest pocket and held out the pictures he had gotten from the cigar box. The photograph of Elizabeth wouldn't be much use; it didn't have a written date, but the paper was old and the color already fading. She must have been fourteen when it was taken. The odds of identifying her by the photo were slim. Booker didn't have an inkling of where the people who would even recognize her could be found.

Before looking for the girl, he needed to find an area to search in. Booker came to the end of the promenade and arrived at the feet of the giant statue of Comstock. Around him was a grassy circle where a family of three was having a picnic in the sunlight. Other streets branched out from around the statue: one back down the promenade, others into alleys packed with people sitting outdoors, waiting in line at vendors, or getting a shoeshine. A number of buildings surrounding them weren't floating on the same platform, so they bobbled up and down in the breeze, never tilting but drifting like ships on a bright, windy sea.

Over at the picnic blanket, the family was talking loudly.

"Perfect day for the celebration!"

"Father Comstock must have foreseen and planned it this way."

It struck Booker that the city – and whoever this Father Comstock was – had an old-time sensibility in spite of the miracle machines that must have kept it floating. Indeed, when Booker gathered up the nerve to gaze out at the bottom of the other floating platforms, he saw them covered in steel girders that emitted some kind of hazy glow from behind their slowly rotating propellers. That strange mixture – a zeal for science-fiction machines only matched by one for sentimental symbols – unnerved Booker. It made him think of the kind of person who believed intensely in the essence of one moment or another; so intensely that he would embrace whatever means to preserve it.

Beside him, a youngish blonde man in a boater hat was talking to a teenager. As he spoke, he casually twisted his hand around in a pontificating way. "Says he's for faith, family, and fatherland. Who could be against all that?"

"Excuse me," Booker said to the man, waving to get his attention. "I was wondering if you could give me some directions. I'm new here." Booker showed him the postcard he had gotten from the cigar box – the one with the golden cherub. "This wouldn't be a landmark now would it?"

The man took the postcard and his face lit up. "Absolutely," he said. "That's Monument Island!"

"Sounds important," said Booker.

"You bet," said the man, handing the postcard back. "You're definitely new here if you're trying to go there. I'm sorry to tell you that it's closed."

"It's alright. I wasn't planning on visiting yet. I just needed a landmark."

"Well, don't think too little of it, friend. It's one of the prides of Columbia. In fact…" Quickly enough he had started lecturing, as Booker assumed he would. Booker nodded his head frequently enough, waiting for this fellow to arrive at something he shouldn't be blabbering about. "Now the only people allowed in are the caretakers, but even they have to be trained to defend themselves from the Vox Populi."

The teenager, who had been standing there with his arms crossed, gave a little huff. "Is that all anyone talks about anymore? Vox Populi this and Vox Populi that! I've never even seen one and neither has anyone I know. What does Vox Populi even mean?"

"Well…" the blonde man started, but trailed off.

"It's Latin," Booker interjected. "It means 'Voice of the People."

The blonde man fidgeted at this and twiddled his thumbs, giving Booker a cross look. "Well…" he started. "The Vox Populi may be dangerous to you and I, but they have no interest in Monument Island aside from issuing the occasional vacant threat. Father Comstock knows – because he has foreseen it – there's only one beast that seeks to remove the lamb from the monument."

Booker felt a sting in his temple at this last remark. It was small enough that no one else noticed one side of his face tighten up, but it reminded him of the migraines he had had as a boy. Maybe it was something about the air at this height. Or maybe he had just been taken aback by something. That stinging from behind his eye was more of a spark working its way to an idea: if the lamb was in the monument and they had given him a picture of it, along with the picture of Elizabeth…

"Is this lamb a girl?" Booker asked.

The blonde man and the teenager looked at Booker in unison, wearing the same expression of befuddlement. He wondered if he had asked the wrong question.

"Well," said the blonde man. "I can't say we ever got a chance to learn. The child was born before I came to the city." He mumbled the last part. "Come along, Harry. Suddenly, I've a bad yearning for some chewing tobacco."

The blonde man grabbed Harry by his elbow and jerked him toward a general store across the grass.

"By the way, mister," Booker called after him. "You never told me where to go."

The blonde man turned around halfway without slowing his pace. "Just head down Main Street. Once you come to the archway of Father Franklin, you'll see it. Flying up there."

Booker felt Comstock's stone face above him, glaring out at the sky from underneath his wispy, carved eyebrows. Across the way, Comstock's likeness was painted on a building, the words "OUR PROPHET" emblazoned in capital letters like the kind written on a dollar. If Booker's hunch was correct, then this wasn't about finding some girl who ran away to an inaccessible city. He was sent here to bring back someone whom Comstock – and his people – was going to make sure would never leave.

Main Street was like any other, albeit brighter than most. The buildings were now close enough together that when Booker did see the blue sky, it seemed like it's old, distant self, miles away, instead of literally just around the corner. Most of the stores were closed and gated, with a few others wearing "Back in one hour" signs. One even had its doors open and a large sign reading, "OFF-DUTY. NO STEALING. YOU'RE ON THE HONOR SYSTEM" and Booker gave a half-confused chuckle. The street wasn't barren though. Children were playing at an open fire hydrant and one restaurant was open with people sitting outside. One man told the waiter to hurry up because they wanted to get to the raffle, and Booker figured that must be the reason every other place was closed. Columbia reminded him of New Orleans quite a bit, in large part because its open-air atmosphere, the way that people and children hovered around the streets without seeming as though they had anywhere they needed to be. As Booker walked, he racked his brain to remember the detective tricks he had gathered when he was in the Pinkertons.

The Pinkertons had used Booker as muscle most of the time. Most of his prior detective work came down to finding the right man and sending him a message with a club or the handle of a pistol. While the other agents would talk about unearthing the corruption of some political boss (these guys were always hired by a rival, crooked political boss), Booker was sneaking in and out of union meetings, following a man until after dark, and leaving him as roughed up as he could so that he kept breathing. It was starting to dawn on Booker that however fierce he was, his style as a detective was about knowing how to beat information out of people. He had never gone up against a system.

He had only been in a situation like this once before, back in 1892, around the time most of the men were being sent off to Homestead. He and three other men were gathered together with what sounded like a simple job. There had been an accident a factory in the Bronx. Six Lithuanians had been injured, two of whom were crippled in both legs. Now someone had come to the agency – a "friend" of the factory owner – looking to make sure the D.A.'s investigation came up with nothing. Normally all Booker had to do was head out with goon squad to the agitator's place and make sure a message got sent. Couldn't do something like that to a D.A., no matter how much they hated him in Albany. They got the job done and Booker never completely understood what had happened – big case, complex stuff, and he wasn't being paid to understand it. All Booker gleaned from that was how big things were and it was easier to keep them rolling than trying to fish something out.

Now, he found himself on the receiving end – a man who needed to find his way around the system. It was time for him to figure out how Columbian security worked so that he could bypass it. Thinking back to the Bronx job, he thought about reverse engineering a couple of the tricks he picked up. They had to destroy evidence, so he had to remember how they recognized it in the first place. They had to stop the flow of information between certain parties, so he needed to remember how to get these people talking. They had to recognize the holes the D.A. could use to bring down the client and plug them up; and he thought about how a network of agents – the same kind he used to depend on – could be divided and exploited.

Toward the end of Main Street, Booker noticed another illustrated poster on the wall, about twice his own height. There were plenty of these around the place, most of which Booker had ignored. But this one caught his eye: it had a painting of a white lamb. The lamb was feeding at the hand of a figure dressed all in black, with a hood obscuring its face. The symbolism was obvious, he thought, but took notice of the writing above the image: "The False Shepherd seeks only to lead the lamb astray."

Booker came to the marble archway and turned the corner. Sure enough, there was Monument Island, floating amongst the clouds with other parts of the city. The statue of the cherub was at least three times taller than any building Booker had seen so far, as though Comstock had commissioned his own, Vatican-style Lady Liberty. It wasn't exactly golden – more of a bronze structure by the look of it. Its arms were gently held out to its sides, like it was showing it had nothing to hide. Of course, it did – it hid precisely what Booker had come to retrieve.

The problem was getting into the place. Even if it weren't closed, he could only speculate as to what kind of security the girl was under. And since it was closed, there probably wouldn't be any rocket to lift him from here to there. Booker paced a bit and leaned against a wall in the shade. _This job is gonna take longer than I thought_. A dirigible drifted off the street. It moved more like a boat than a plane. This close, he could see the people inside, sitting in rows like in a railcar. For a moment, he thought of commandeering one of these blimps, but then realized it would be too conspicuous. The police would be keeping eyes on all of them. Again, he thought back to how the Pinkertons had worked around the system from the top down. Before he quit – after Homestead – an older agent had told him that the trickiest targets were the ones who used the tools nobody noticed. Or at least, the ones they took for granted.

Booker stepped out into the sun, realizing he was starting to shiver. But then the shadows came over him again, clipping back and forth between light and shadow. Above him was a long metal pipe. He had noticed a few of them when he first arrived in the city, but he assumed they were part of the plumbing. But they weren't pipes after all – they were rails. The shadows cast on him were crates, each about the size of a trolley, and they were sliding along the rails with barely a sound besides the rushing of air. Each crate was branded with a big, flashy logo that rushed by too fast for him to read. But he could see how the rails ran through the city like vines, around the buildings and between the islands. Looking out around Monument Island and its surrounding neighborhoods, Booker saw more rails and crates moving along them like railcars through the air. They ran up and downward. They weren't everywhere, but they were common enough to be commonplace. It dawned on Booker DeWitt that whatever cargo was in the crates were the essentials to how the city functioned: food, steel, spare parts, and anything that Comstock's people needed quickly and on demand. And some of those things needed to go to Monument Island. Booker rarely smiled, but he almost gave a little smirk, less pleased with himself than he was with this prophet's blind spot. There was a way to get around this city undetected, and with that a way to bypass this system.

He walked off to find a stockyard for the crates, the place where he could learn where they went and how he could sneak onto one of them unnoticed. Main Street had given way to a wide field of grassy parks and carnival booths, like someone had dropped a county fair into a metropolis. A long rail wound its way through the towers that surrounded the field, carrying more cargo and making hardly a sound. As Booker followed the path of the rails, he kept off the grass and closer to the arches bridged the field to the alleys. Each archway was adorned with posters and prints, most with images of Comstock and Monument Island, always illustrated with heavenly glows and beams of yellow light. Each poster grew more banal as Booker tried to ignore them – writing proclaiming Comstock's gift of foresight, the new Eden in the clouds, the lamb growing into the future of the city. The railway started an incline and curved its path deeper into the city. Booker started to follow, but paused when something caught his eye. He was in an archway with another poster, different from the others. This one was painted in black and red, rendering a silhouette of a crooked, long-fingered hand, like the kind Booker imagined witches and goblins had when he was a child. But what caused him to stop was what was written on the demonic hand, glowing in yellow: A.D. Over the image, the poster read: "You will recognize the False Shepherd by his mark."

Instinctively, Booker shoved both his hands into pockets. _This is a set-up_ , he thought. _They tried drowning me and when that didn't work they branded me for a hunt. Unless… no. Were they expecting me?_ His hands still in pockets, Booker backed away from the poster and nearly tripped as the street gave way to the grass. He wanted to wipe his forehead, which was sweating all of a sudden, but for a moment couldn't remember which hand bore the mark.

"Telegram for you, Mr. DeWitt!"

Booker was caught off guard by the boy and nearly jumped, but held his breath and kept his hands in his pocket. A boy had appeared at his side, holding out a card.

"Um… here's your telegram, Mr. DeWitt."

Booker stood there, not flinching. The boy looked confused as well. He probably figured if he stuck to the script, he didn't need to worry.

"How is it for me?" Booker asked. "I just got here."

"That's the funny thing, sir. My boss told me this was scheduled to be delivered to this spot at this exact time." The boy took out a pocket watch, flipped it open, and nodded, looking a little please with himself.

Booker leaned in closer to the boy. "Is this a joke?"

The boy just smiled, still a little befuddled. "Afraid not, Mr. DeWitt. I mean, there's only one man who can see the future. Maybe he's shared his gift."

Booker took his left hand from his pocket and snatched the telegram away. The boy remained. "Scram kid. I don't have any money for a tip."

The boy wiped the smile from his face and trotted off. Booker held the telegram before him.

 **DeWitt STOP Do not alert Comstock to your presence STOP Whatever you do, do not pick #77 STOP**

– **Lutece**


	4. Chapter 4: It's Always Heads

Chapter 4 – It's Always Heads

Booker kept on walking with his hands deep in his pockets. Nestled into a crowd, he waited for a drawbridge to connect two of the islands, delayed by a dirigible sailing through the road of wind between them. The dirigible drifted past and the mechanical planks of the drawbridge emerged from the underbellies of the islands, locking themselves into each other with heaving, steel hooks, like the kind in a factory. Crossing the bridge, Booker walked in a zigzag motion, slowly enough so that no one could pick up on it. He had to make sure nobody kept their eyes on him long enough to notice anything off about this man, who carried himself differently enough that he had to be new to Columbia; new enough that he was worth conversing with; maybe inscrutable enough to notice that he never removed his right hand from his pocket.

The path from the bridge opened to a plaza. Firecrackers burst and balloons bobbled in the wind. Betsy Ross flags waved out from the windows of the apartment buildings. Surrounded by colors and distractions, Booker allowed himself to reflect. _Whoever this Comstock is, he can't really see the future. He's just got a lot of eyes and they get back to his ears quickly._ Still, from that moment on, Booker resolved that nothing would surprise him. If Comstock had a dragon waiting for him, then Booker would make sure to find a cannon. If this girl – Elizabeth – ended up being some experiment, some crime against nature, Booker figured he would have to swallow his pride and pay the bill.

 _But what the hell is #77?_ he wondered. _Address? A door? Baseball player?_ Whatever #77 was, he had to make sure to stay clear of it.

Across the plaza, balloons hung from the trees and streetlamps. Red, white, and blue confetti flew into the sky and sprinkled into the crowd. He walked past a fountain where a few balloons were tied down, and realized that behind its caricaturized, brightly colored featured, was a familiar face, gripping a big, cartoon key.

"Ben Franklin?" he said to himself.

"That's Father Franklin, mister." A lady from the crowd stopped to wag her finger disapprovingly in Booker's face, then carried onward, huffing.

Booker took stock of his surroundings. The crowd was starting to thin and he could pick out individuals; lots of women in fancy bonnets (it wasn't Easter for a while now, was it?), most of whom were restraining kids from running off; a man selling buttons and firecrackers from a pushcart; a blue-skirted, blonde woman holding a miniature garden in her arms – "Would you care for a boutonniere? We're raising money for the Girl's Patriotic League."

"Maybe next time," Booker said, waving her away with his clean hand.

But in all of it, Booker had his eyes peeled for two types of people: cops and longshoremen. More specifically, whatever equivalent longshoremen had for a city in the clouds. He needed to pick out the kind of man who could lead him to wherever those sky-rails were loaded with crates. The rails themselves ran in too many directions, and Booker noticed that they almost always carried over between islands. Following them would only lead him to dead ends.

As for cops, Booker had already spotted a few of them and created some distance wherever he could. Two of them were buying hot dogs at another pushcart just off the fountain path. One of them held another strange device – similar to a baton, held the same way, but past the hand it morphed into a whirring gyre that spun quickly like a pinwheel. Booker almost wanted to take a closer look at the contraption, but these men were Comstock's eyes and arms.

Finally, Booker saw the man he was looking for, coming from around the frankfurter cart. A big fellow, with biceps like round, smooth stones, – the kind you could see the veins just sitting under – was rounding the corner and heading down a busy street jutting out form the path. He wore an ascot hat, keeping his black curls crawling out from the brim, and coveralls without any stains from oil or blood (so he probably wasn't a butcher). But the telltale sign was his belt, the tools hanging from their pouches, and the giant wrench he slung over his shoulder with ease.

 _Alright, buddy. Show me where they load the crates. Let's go to Monument Island._ Booker grinned and, careful not to keep his distance from both the man and the cops, followed the big fellow down the road.

Trailing the man down a few roads, Booker noticed the crowd growing larger. The man he followed was tall enough that his head stood out above the crowd, but Booker made sure to close the distance between them just a bit. Still, the crowd grew thicker and thicker, until he turned a corner and it finally dispersed. Booker was so overwhelmed with the volume of people, and his focus so tight on the big man, he nearly tripped over a placard standing in the middle of the road.

"COLUMBIA RAFFLE AND FAIR 1912."

 _Raffle?_ Booker kept going, following the big man, even as he put the pieces together in his mind. _Seemed like it was some sort of holiday. Stores closed. Everyone out and about. All the balloons and confetti. And the raffle…_

The crowd stayed large, but spread out thin enough that Booker could clearly spot the big man, slinging the wrench off his shoulder. He moved into the shade, at the base of a bulky, mechanical box, decorated with colorful light bulbs and circus letters. Two men, each sporting handlebar moustaches, leaned against a fence, smoking.

"Figure out what's wrong with it, and fast, paddy!" one of them said. "We've been waiting for a mechanic for twenty minutes! That's twenty minutes of silver eagles down the drain!"

Booker's face sank and he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his left hand. _Dead end_. He tried to think of where he could double back to, how to get away from this crowd. At the same time, he couldn't be the only one leaving at the same time everyone else was pouring in. And then the truth of the matter hit him: raffles have numbers you pick. Could even go as high as 77.

All Booker could do was gulp. _I'm right where they want me. How did they do it? There's no way they could have set all this up. Unless someone else was trying to tell me something._ It struck Booker that he'd forgotten to ask one question. _The person who sent the telegram - Who was Lutece?_

There was no way of even guessing. The name was a little familiar, but he couldn't recall where he'd heard it. It seemed like the harder he tried, the less he could pin down. He realized he was staring into space and needed to blend in.

The fair was stuffed with the usual exposition features: all variety of electric light, crackling and buzzing in many colors; machines great and small that puttered and spun, puffing smoke and shooting sparks; Booker thought he spotted a horse, but underneath its skin gleamed polished metal and steam wafted from the crown of its head; hucksters handing out fries and candied apples, beer and soda-water; games from high-strikers to shooting galleries, some in the open air and others expanding below circus tents; what seemed like a hundred small tables dedicated to some marvelous new snake oil or technological miracle (though given the city he was in, he'd probably believe it if he had the luxury of taking the time). There was a big tent nearby, with people lined up to the edge. A barker stood out front, proclaiming: "Shoot down the deadly Vox Populi plaguing our fair city! Extra bonus prize for any who can shoot that anarchist, Daisy Fitzroy!"

Stepping away, Booker walked past a quartet of banjo players, plucking away a tune he didn't recognize. Another barker at the next stand had drawn a crowd of about twenty, all packed together trying to get a glimpse at some obscured marvel.

"That's no magic, my friends! Only the finest wonders Columbia's greatest minds have produced! Those are vigors!"

A great flame shot straight up and the crowd flinched back. The fire disappeared quickly, like a gas stove, and the crowd applauded.

All he really needed was something that had no possibility of numbers, something to preoccupy him and keep him from standing out.

"Heads?" A man's voice called out.

"Or tails?" A woman chimed in.

Booker turned his head. Something about their voices, particularly their flatness made them stand out among the overly exuberant barkers and grabbed his attention. There was no tent, or stand, or even mechanical marvel; just a man and a woman, both dressed so precisely in wheat-colored coat and shirtwaist, which he thought looked slightly feminine on a man and more than a little masculine on a woman. Both wore matching green neckties that tucked into their shirts. They were redheaded; she had a haircut like a Gibson girl, and his was combed like something out of England, as though they had stepped out of a picture from a decade earlier.

She held out a rusty platter. Over his suit, the man wore a chalk-sandwich board, divided down the middle by a vertical line. On one side, labeled "HEADS" were about six rounds of five-point tally marks. The other side, labeled "TAILS" was bare.

The man tossed Booker a coin, which he snatched out of mid-air

"Heads?" he said.

"Or tails?" she said.

Booker gave a little sigh. "Tails."

He flicked his thumb just so, and the coin flew out and landed in the center of the platter. It spun around on its edge for two seconds before rattling to a stop.

The woman took a piece of chalk from her coat pocket and added a mark to the sandwich board: another line on "HEADS."

"Told you," said the man. "I never find that as satisfying as I'd imagined."

"Chin up. There's always next time," said the woman, sounding bored.

"Excuse me?" Booker interjected. "You two have a point for all this?"

"Studying constants and variables," said the woman.

Something about the two seemed familiar – the way they completed each other's thoughts without seeming cute about it. The way they seemed to argue without eliciting much of a response from the other. As they turned to converse with each other, Booker noticed the back of the sandwich board, with the same "HEADS" and "TAILS" columns. "HEADS" was completely full.

Booker took a glance around to make sure he wasn't lingering too much. Then he realized…

"Wait a minute," Booker began, turning to face them. They had disappeared. Whipping his head around, Booker ran to the next stand and tapped the barker on the shoulder.

"Excuse me?" said Booker. "Did you see where those two went? Your neighbors?"

"What neighbors?" asked the barker. "Oh, you mean the British folks? Say, where did they go?"

"They were just here." At least he hadn't imagined them. But he recognized them for sure: they were the people from the boat he arrived in.

"Maybe the officer can help you out," said the barker, waving in the other direction. "Excuse me! Police! This man wants to ask a question!"

Before he even got a chance to see the policemen, Booker had already turned around and walked away faster than he should have. He darted around frantically, looking for anywhere he could disappear. Any time he came to a tree or a tent, he walked around it, putting anything he could between himself and the cops who might be following him. Finally, he saw a crowd and almost threw himself into it. Slipping between the people, his hands still thrust into his pockets, he gradually came to a stop once he felt he was deeply obscured enough. He hadn't noticed until then the crowd was singing.

- _Irene, good night, Irene, good night_

 _Good night, Irene, good night, Irene_

 _I'll get you in my dreams-_

"And now!" cried a voice from above the crowd. "The 1912 Raffle has officially begun!"

Through a crack in the crowd, Booker glimpsed a stage, sitting right there in the open. It was lit up with banners and balloons and so many decorations that the eye couldn't focus on anything aside from the big red curtain that ran alongside. At the front stood a man announcing to the crowd. He didn't have a microphone – he just projected very well. At first, Booker thought he could be the ringmaster of this place, but his outfit was too reserved: dressed in a stylish black coat that fell past his knees and a top hat wide as a stovepipe, the man danced about the stage, waving his arm and occasionally rubbing the end of his combed moustache.

"You all know me as one Jeremiah Fink! But even big shots like me know ta take a day off ta celebrate this glorious day! Don't worry, that won't slow down production!"

Booker tried to squeeze his way out of the crowd, but it was packed thick, and pushing people was difficult with his hands in his pockets. Pretty soon he had lost his sense of direction, and was unsure exactly where the crowd would thin out, or where the cops might be looking for him.

"Today we're celebratin' the big one, ladies and gents," cried Fink. "Ten years! Since Father Comstock led us from the Sodom below! Ten years since our great secession!"

Booker suddenly pushed his way into a gap in the crowd and collided with something.

"Hey!" A girl's voice cried as Booker fell to the ground. Instinctively, he stuck his arms out to break his fall and quickly found himself picking them out of grass and dirt and shoving them back into his pockets. Getting to his knees, he saw the girl he knocked over crawling across the grass, pulling a basket alongside her. All around them were baseballs, strewn across the grass. A small part of the crowd had opened into an oval around Booker, looking down at them with expressions of confusion and awkwardness.

"Please, don't take any!" The girl said, picking up the balls near her and chucking them into the basket. "The rules are you have to be handed one."

Feeling that he looked suspicious, Booker cautiously removed his hands from his pockets, careful to keep his right palm facing upward.

"Here," he said, "Lemme help. I'm sorry about that."

"Oh, it's fine," said the girl.

"Nah, I feel bad about it." Booker scooped up a few of the remaining baseballs and dropped them in the basket, attentive to the position of his tattoo. Most of the crowd had returned their focus to the stage. Plucking the last ball up from a small depression in the dirt, Booker took the basket so the girl could get to her feet.

"Thanks, mister," she said.

"Don't mention it." Booker handed the basket to her and offered up the last of the baseballs with his left hand. The girl looked at and hesitated. Her eyes lit up.

"You know what," she said, bringing her voice down to a hush, "That one's yours."

"No thanks," said Booker. "I can't pay."

"Don't be silly," she said. "There's no charge for the raffle. Besides, you helped me out and that's a lucky number you've got."

"Bring me the bowl!" cried Fink from the stage.

The girl skipped off, quickly handing out the remaining baseballs to pushy fairgoers. Booker hesitated, frozen by the realization of what had just occurred. _There's no way…_

He turned the ball over in his hand and saw a number written across it.

"Number seventy-seven!"

"Over here! Over here! He's the winner!"

"Number seventy-seven come up here and claim your prize: first throw!" The crowd opened as everyone turned to face Booker, ushering him toward the foot of stage. He now had a clear view of Fink, who was waving a slip of paper as though it were a hundred bucks. Behind Fink, the curtain started to rise and the sound of choral music playing on an organ. The crowd cheered and clapped gleefully, but not too loud that Booker couldn't hear someone shouting from just behind the curtain. "Please. It was all me! Leave her out of this!"

The curtain rose completely and the crowd burst into laughter. Towering over the stage, a painting of a giant monkey stared over the crowd, smiling through gigantic, red lips. It wore a top hat and a bowtie, and was surrounded by rows of bananas and palm trees at its feet. Between its legs, tied to the cartoon palm tree, were two actual people, stripped down to their undergarments and crying: a blonde man, seeming college-aged, and a Negro woman.

"Don't miss." A man said to Booker as he gave him a pat on the shoulder.

"Never do," said Booker, flatly. His hand in his pocket trembled. Over fifty pairs of eyes surrounded him and as he tried to take in the sight on stage, images from Wounded Knee flashed before him. They had tied the women up too, when they were done with the men.

Fink pranced about the stage, faux-conducting the organ player. Booker could no longer hear the cries of the couple being pushed toward him like a freak show.

"Well, what are you waitin' for, mister?" said Fink, jauntily. "Are you gonna throw it? Or are you takin' your coffee _black_ these days? Ha!"

Booker took a deep breath, trying to chase the visions away. He still trembled slightly, but placed the ball into his throwing hand. He tossed it up and caught it, twice, exercising his hand. He put Fink in his sights and wound up.

But he didn't release it. Something pulled at his wrist from behind his back.

"It's him!"

The ball nearly slipped out of hand as a policeman pulled him by the wrist toward the stage. Fink peered down to glimpse Booker's hand.

"Hey, buddy," said Fink, looking right into Booker's eyes, "Where'd you get that brand? Don'tcha know that makes you the back-stabbin', snake-in-the-grass False Shepherd?" Fink raised himself up and shouted to the crowd, "And we ain't lettin' no False Shepherd in'ta our flock!"

Maybe the crowd had started to jeer, but Booker began to drown out the noises surrounding him with that of the blood pumping in his ears. The background seemed to blur, with the only clear objects being the faces of two policemen on both sides of him, scowling into his face. One of them held Booker's free arm against his back and his head in place. The other kept his arms free, only to hold up the same tool he recognized from before – the baton that ended in the bladed gyre. Silently, the gyre's blades whirred, faster and faster, until he couldn't pick one out from the other, and the policeman readied his arm to plunge the tool into Booker's face.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion until Booker could see each whirring blade spinning toward him. Booker exhaled, so smoothly it was more like a sigh, and did the only thing he could. He threw the ball into the air. It seemed to him to float up like a balloon. To the policeman holding him in place, it must have been something else because his eyes followed it up the way a baby is drawn to shiny objects. And with the policeman's face now tilted away, and Booker's right hand free, he slipped it around the policeman's shoulder, gripped the back of his head, and thrust it ahead into the path of the whirring blades.

Blood sprayed over Booker and the police, though it didn't much affect him. He took the other policeman, still registering what Booker had done to his friend, and tossed him into the crowd while managing to slip his pistol out of its holster. Booker cocked his head, as the world came back into focus and things moved as they normally did. That ability he had – to pick up on every detail of a heated moment – had gotten him through Wounded Knee and made him a popular hire at the agency. He heard the screams from the crowd, but didn't react. Three more policemen came into his vision, reaching for their holsters, and he shot each of them before they made it to him.

"Get out of the way!" The crowd parted and Booker ran. Over his shoulder, he noticed both Fink and the couple from the stage had disappeared in the confusion. Around him, the crowd scattered like mice, screaming for help.

Pushing over fairgoers and hopping over tables, Booker plowed through two more policemen trying to gather themselves as sirens began to wail. Out of the fair, past the courtyard and onto the street, he ran to the edge of the closest bridge. Before he could step on, its girders snapped away and disconnected. He heard gunshots behind him and ran down a crowded street. The sound of guns stopped, but Booker didn't slow down. He dipped into an alley, knocking over garbage cans or anything he could put between him and his pursuers.

The alley started branching, with different pathways emerging. Booker ran down the darkest one, slowly his pace to keep his footsteps from echoing. Off in the distance, he heard the muffled sound of sirens and people shouting. He could sense that he was getting deeper into a network of alleys, turning corners each time a new one opened. If he ended up covering the same space, it wouldn't hurt if his pursuers already checked it. Turning a new corner, he noticed a bright patch of sunlight coming down the path. He started to double back. Suddenly, something wrenched at his collar and pulled him back into the shadows.

Booker crashed into a receptacle and fell with his bottom on the stone pavement. Looking up, he saw the man who had pulled him away wasn't a policeman. He was the white man from the Raffle, the mixer who they tied to the stake. Sure enough, the Negro woman from before was there. She stood a few feet away, peering over a brick wall lined with shrubs and flowers.

"You were going to help them pelt us!" said the man.

"What? No, I -"

"Richard?" the woman shouted from down the alley. "Richard, they're following him, not us. Now's our chance!"

"Okay, hold on, Nettie." Then he said to Booker, "You weren't going to throw it at us?"

"No, I was gonna hit that other guy, Fink."

"Are you with the Vox?"

"What? No. I just don't like victimizing is all. Even if you are into that stuff."

Richard shoved his foot into Booker's groin and pushed him to the base of the alley wall. "Say that again!" he said.

"Richard," Nettie said. "We need to go."

"If you wanna mix and all that…" said Booker, straining under Richard's foot. "Look, it doesn't matter. No matter what it is, there's no world where that's worth getting beaten in public over."

Richard slipped something metallic out of his pocket. Booker scrambled to his feet, but Richard pinned him against the wall. "Maybe you weren't going to throw the ball. But if they locked us up anyway, you'd think it was for the best. Everyone does around here."

Richard shoved the knife through Booker's palm. Nettie took Richard by the hand and they ran off. Staggering, Booker grasped the handle of the knife as gently he could. It still stung like fire under his skin. Without waiting a moment longer, he ripped it as smoothly as possible from his palm, grinding his teeth together to keep from shouting. Blood poured from his shaking hand.

 _No, not now,_ he thought. _Can't shoot…_

He untied his neckerchief using just the fingers and his left hand, and tied it around his throbbing hand.

"There he is!" Voices started coming from down the alley, followed by running footsteps. Booker didn't bother glancing over his shoulder as he ran toward the light at the end of the alley. A gunshot went off behind him, but he just ran faster. He ran out into an empty street of cobblestones, and onto a grassy plaza lined with benches. The blood pumping through his ears quieted down, and the sound of whirring sirens filled the air. He reached the end of the plaza, and nearly collapsed over the fenced-rails that separated him from the drop below the clouds. Above him were six different sky rails, angling out in different directions on his left and right. But none of them jetted out to the structure directly before him: the statue of the cherub, its childlike arms and face set against the sky – Monument Island, floating half a mile away.

Booker's legs wobbled. He picked himself up from the fenced-rails and tried to gain his balance. He was losing too much blood and he couldn't return fire. He thought he heard Slate yelling in the back of his memories, but he had no idea what his old commander would have told him now. Turning around, he braced himself for the onslaught of police. But though they were there – must have been twenty of them – they didn't fire. They were all on their knees, heads bowed, a few of them with their hands clasped together. Booker heard the whirring of strange engines – a completely alien sound. The closest thing he could describe to it was the sound a light bulb inside an oven, and even that didn't account for its eerie yet smooth crackling.

Booker glanced back at Monument Island, but now a platform gently descended from above. It stopped fifty feet away from him, levitating like a blimp, though its surface was flat. Several heavily armed police knelt on its wooden planks, which were all that stood between them and the bulbous engines on the bottom that emitted a purple glow, making the air around them hazy and blurred. And in the center of the floating platform a stood a familiar-looking man, standing before a microphone stand. Booker recognized his navy-blue cloak hoisted over his gray blazer and pale trousers. But, of course, the give away was his beard and silver hair, combed back from his face.

"I know why you've come, False Shepherd," said Comstock. The microphone had a kind of feedback, so that every other word he spoke was accompanied by a deep echo.

"You don't know me, pal," said Booker, shouting back over the edge of the fenced-rail.

"Doubting my gift won't keep you from my sight. I see every sin that blackens your soul. Wounded Knee. The Pinkertons. The drinking. The gambling. And, of course… Anna."

"Shut up!" Booker whipped the pistol out with his left hand and fired two shots. Nothing happened. Didn't even hit a stray security guard.

"And now…" continued Comstock, his voice spitting with contempt. "To repay a debt, you've come for my Lamb. But not all debts can be repaid, Booker.

 _This has gotta be a trick,_ thought Booker. _He's got some kind of informant on me._

"What's your game, Comstock?"

"Prophecy is my business, Mr. DeWitt, as trouble is yours. You know why these men will die for me? Because I have seen their future in the glory, and hence they are content. What brought you to Columbia, Booker? 'Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt?' This will end in blood, Mr. DeWitt. Then again, it always does with you."

Suddenly, Booker felt something lodged in his throat, something thick and soft. He gulped and a stinging came from behind his eye. Wiping his nose with his left hand, Booker found blood smeared across his fingers. In the back of his mind, he heard the banging at the door to his office. He was reliving it again.

But the world around him wasn't going to wait. Comstock's platform rose higher into the sky. Policeman swung from above on the sky-rails, hanging on with the whirring wheels he had used to kill that man at the raffle. Behind him, the police ended their prayer and stood up. As Booker's head grew foggy and the banging at the back of his memory grew louder, forty policemen surrounded him with guns and whirring weapons. Booker dropped the pistol. Blood was coming from his nose and his wounded hand; the pain in his head spread all over his skull; the voices called him back to his office, where he was strung out on the floor. " _We had a deal, DeWitt! Bring us the girl!"_


	5. Chapter 5: Day in the Life of M Prescot

_Content Warnings: Racism, Misogyny, anti-Semitism_

 **Chapter 5 – One Day in the Life of Matthew Prescott**

By five o'clock in the afternoon, he hadn't managed to close one sale, even in the apartments of Emporia. The material in his briefcase was lightweight and the breeze pleasant, but the lines of sweat rolling down his forehead could be glimpsed even in the shadow of his hat-brim. They made him look tepid, as though he had something to hide, which made sales all the harder. But Matthew Prescott was honest – as far as a salesman went – and had no reason to swindle, sweet-talk, or deceive the decent, pious, white people of Columbia, called the Founders. Throughout school, Prescott was always the Duke and never the Dimwit. He did not lie and he believed that hard work was its own reward. He scoffed at those who thought they were owed a frivolous happiness, beyond what determination and duty to the Fathers bequeathed. He combed his hair each morning, kissed his wife, Angelica, on his way out the door, and was bold enough to see greater things for himself over the horizons if he puts his mind and body to it.

Matthew Prescott was an honest man, and here he was, unwanted and hopeless in the late summer of Columbia. He had gone a week without one sale.

Coming up on the Comstock Center Rooftops, Prescott crossed his fingers. He told himself that life in Emporia moved too fast, that the good people there didn't have the time to do their arithmetic. If they had, they'd have seen they could spend a good amount of Silver Eagles on a large supply of his Future-Flooring tiles. He couldn't blame them for not seeing it. He tried not to let his frustration get to him. Comstock Center had the customers he needed – folks with deep pockets, but not so far removed from the average Founder that they couldn't see the value in floor-boarding that didn't stain or absorb liquid.

Still, after being turned away by maids at two doors, Prescott couldn't say he believed in Comstock Center in quite the same way. He resolved to avoid the large residences, and knock on the door of a house that seemed more comfortably in the middle. As the door opened, he launched into his routine before he even caught a glimpse of the face of who opened.

"Good afternoon," he said. "The name is Matthew Prescott. I believe I can interest you in a utility like few others."

The woman who answered the door seemed ten years his senior. Her well-dressed, composed impression was betrayed by the look on her face: bored, small eyes, set between large eyebrows and thick, dark bags.

"It may seem like the scientific marvels of Columbia have already reached their zenith," Matthew continued. "But what if I told you that you could witness the latest in high quality industrial wonders, right beneath your feet?"

"You're talking about flooring, sir?" asked the woman at the door. "You can just call it floor" Regardless of her prickly tone, she kept the door open and Prescott say the opportunity. With ease gained from daily repetition, he opened the briefcase and displayed its contents.

"This is Future Floor. Are you tired of spilling a drink or dropping a dish and everything being absorbed into the gorgeous wood that lines your home? Well, this may look like wood, but by using specially designed coating, everything just slides off. Like shingles on a roof!"

The potential customer just stood there. She kept looking back and forth between Prescott's smiling face and the tiles in his briefcase, without moving her head an inch.

"I think I've heard of this," she said, though she seemed no more involved than before. "Isn't this just like that Fink-tiling sort of thing everyone is talking about?"

"Oh… well, you should know that Fink's material is factory-made. Assembly line and slapdash. He can make more of it, but it breaks down many times faster. Not much use in durable floor-tiling if it only lasts a year, is it?"

"But is it cheaper?"

"Well… uh…" Prescott had nothing to say. He did, however, have the strong impulse to shove open the door, displaying everything a couple in this part of town could afford, how absurd it was they insisted on buying every price-gouged widget Jeremiah Fink pumped out of his factories when they could be helping a contracted salesman.

But Prescott was a decent man, and on his way back down the block, to add insult to injury, an automated stallion trotted past him. The clicking and hissing steam from the mechanical beast had frightened him as a child. Since then he had gone from learning to appreciate the beasts as a sign of productivity, the necessary parts of a beautiful, functioning city, to sheepishly confessing that he dreaded their presence. As much as he knew what good they did for the city, they had come to serve as reminders of his foolishness. As he hopelessly knocked on doors, trying to get Founders interested in everything from Voxophones to floor tiling (and all other manner of Fink products sold at cheaper price), Easter & Son's Automated Stallions carried Columbia's Finest Ice to every household on a regular, paying subscription. Including his.

That same house, where Angelica tidied about the place, waiting for him to return, seemed all too pitiful for him to return to on a day like this. Returning home to a mildly suitable dwelling, bearing a wife who couldn't bear him any children, all sitting atop a lease that was sliding out of his grasp; it made him nauseous at the thought of it, as though he were back in school being humiliated by the rough boys, or chastised by his teacher when he forgot the words to the Prayer of Allegiance to the Angel Columbia. What he wouldn't trade to wipe the slate clean – his job back at Robbins', selling newly-produced Vigors over the counter, a wife whose presence he didn't resent for her shortcomings, anything to feel the same pleasure he once derived from the flag, the faith, and pursuit of happiness. If he had just accepted his position in life – the lower end of the Founder class, but still a Founder living in Baxton-Town – and not decided he was made for better things. Risking it on being an entrepreneur. He ended up being the Dimwit after all.

As the engines of the city guided it away from the sun and into the beginning of their evening, Prescott decided that he needed to stay away from home for his own sanity. He would instead go to the boarding house instead, and see the bookkeeper. He knew he was walking toward bad news, but the man needed to face his troubles. However, he had also been walking toward policemen with his head down, and returned to the present only once he was already on the ground, profusely apologizing for bumping into the officer.

"Watch where you're going," said the policeman.

"Sorry, sorry," said Prescott, scrambling to pick up his briefcase and shaking his head. He averted his eyes from the policeman, instead catching a glimpse of the magnetized Sky-Hook strapped across the policeman's arm. With its rotating gyres of steel fixed into a sturdy wooden frame, it doubled as both a quick tool of transport and a deadly weapon to be used against the anarchists plaguing the city. In the last few months, since the appearance and disappearance of the False Shepherd, all the police had started carrying Sky-Hooks, zipping across the Sky-Line that connected Columbia's islands. Prescott thought that, after four months, they had probably scared the Beast away. He had heard a rumor a while back that the whole thing was a sham. Father Comstock had said nothing more since Secession Day, and the idea had been floating around that the whole thing was a ruse by the Vox Populi to throw the police off Daisy Fitzroy's trail. Without Father Comstock's guidance, Fitzroy and her goons might've pulled a fast one on all of us, sent some scoundrel to give them a scare and send them into panic. Maybe, he thought, it was about time for the police to stop prowling the streets and go back to investigating these anarchists who were hiding right under our noses. But, after all, he thought, who was he to tell the police how to do their job?

He scurried past the policemen, hunched but looking straight ahead to avoid any further collisions, especially with less respectable types. They would soon abound now that he was entering Charity-Post. Prescott was careful to stay to one side of the street, after noticing a fisticuffs brawl happening on the opposite side. The two brawlers looked Irish, which he thought was sadly predictable. An abundance of red hair aside, Irish looked no different from the regular Founder – same shape of the face, same pale skin, same capacity for redemption and faith. Charity-Post was full of them, and even though Prescott new the laws of the faith, he didn't see why an Irishman couldn't raise above his station in life. It was only a shame they kept holding themselves back, staying here.

Prescott came to the boarding house. It was tucked between two small, brick houses. The one on the left gave off a strong smell of raw beef, and he wondered if it was a butcher's residence. Inside, the place seemed pleasant enough, like a place of living rather than merely staying, and Mrs. McNulty was in a chair in the far corner, reading a book. She glanced up for a moment, and then returned to her book, her expression unchanged.

"Mr. Levine is in his room," she said. "Don't disturb the other boarders."

"Thank you," said Prescott, and he walked up the stairs, which creaked with each step. The staircase opened up to the narrow, dim hallway he had grown to know well. As he paced the hall, it dawned on him that one thing he didn't know was numbers: he had always had a poor grasp of hard specific: numbers and names. He had come to depend on the small box Levine had attached to the side of his door – the special, Jewish device. But none of the doors had the box, and as he paced, he wondered if it had been stolen or Levine had thought it better to finally conceal his heresy in a city like theirs. Pacing, his footsteps grew louder and louder.

"Matty," a voice called, emerging from an open door. Levine appeared in the hallway, adjusting his glasses with one hand and keeping the door open with the other. Levine had always been orderly, always wearing freshly ironed shirts and making sure the lines between his beard and skin were smooth. His hair wasn't straight, but not the ratty kind Prescott normally associated with his kind. In fact, whenever he visited, Prescott always wondered why Levine didn't look like more of a Jew.

"You caught me on a good night," said Levine, as Prescott entered and closed the door behind him. "I was planning on catching up on my reading. You'll never believe it, but I got my hands on a copy of 'Huckleberry Finn.' Always wanted to read that one, but it wasn't in the prison library and when I was brought here, I learned it was banned. Are you familiar with the plot?"

"Not the kind of book I need to hear about from you, Levine."

"Sorry. It's just – that's why I'm at home tonight." Levine twitched his fingers about nervously as he crossed the room and opened a filing cabinet that sat next to the window. Levine's room was just that – a room, with an enclave of a kitchen jutting out on the far end. Most of it was barren, the only decoration being the plain green curtains and a small painting of a dog that hung over the bed. The mood of the room was dominated by Levine's cot, his desk, and the adjacent filing cabinet, all of which were close enough to each other that you could move between the three of them without touching the floor. On occasion, Prescott found a degree of sympathy for the poor man. As proud as Prescott was, he knew that being born a Founder was a matter of fortune, not ill-intent. Others might say the people of the boarding house deserved their spot in life – guided by Divine Providence, not luck – but Prescott couldn't find it in himself to judge so harshly, or believe that this was really all there could be for someone like Levine. Still, he also knew the facts of the matter: there wasn't enough to go around in this world. The more the Levines could gain, the less the Prescotts could hold onto. Even if a man had a right to dignity, it didn't require another man (a man like Prescott) to sacrifice what he was owed.

Levine gathered up the papers and strewn them across his cot. His shoes already off, Levine pulled himself onto the bed and ran his hands over the charts and numbers. Prescott sat at Levine's desk, trying to wait out his own nerves.

"So," said Prescott, anxiously tapping on Levine's desk, "how deep am I in?

Levine slowly lowered the papers from his eyes and gave a sigh. "I mean, it could be worse."

"Oh dear," said Prescott. The words barely made it past his lips, not shouted or whispered, but merely breathed out. He wasn't so much struck by the shock of Levine's words as much as he finally allowed the gravity of what he already knew to fully weigh down on his arms, his beaten-down heart.

"Matty?" asked Levine. But Prescott didn't respond. He could only think of the lease on the house. This close to being done, falling away from his grasp, all gone with the money he blew on floor tiles.

"This is a disaster," said Prescott.

"Maybe you just need to rethink your business strategy," said Levine. "I've seen people – people who aren't even Founders – recover from sums like this." Levine got up from his cot and tried to shake Prescott from his stupor. "Why, if you find a new trade, you could recover from this in about three months. No more."

"I don't have three months!" Prescott threw Levine off of him, breathing heavily. He started to comb his fingers through his own hair, as though repeating his morning ritual could do-over from the day's losses. "I've got a lease to pay off. A real home! Not like this house of disgrace your kind calls home. Do you know where I'll have to go if I come home and they've put a lock on the door? Well, Levine, I swear that I am not going to sink so low to live in Finkton among the Negroes!"

Prescott buried his face in his hands, but he had long ago trained himself to avoid tears in front of a man.

"How can you live with yourself?" he asked, angrily, his voice muffled from behind his palms. "Making your money off other people's hard work. Off of good people like me. Do you enjoy watching scenes like this?"

Levine was unmoved, or at least seemed that way. His eyes narrowed, but his face betrayed contempt.

"I've learned to live with it. Maybe if your Prophet made it legal for my people to own land here, I could have a shop. Make a decent living. But, hey, Matty, welcome to the way the rest of us live. Doing things we aren't so proud of because someone else can't let us make the world a better place.

"To be perfectly honest though, bookkeeping doesn't bring in a whole lot. Sometimes I have to keep my ear to ground. It reminds me of a little story my mother used to tell me. It comes from the Book of Ruth, who lived among the wheat harvesters. Whenever there was a harvest, the farmers had plenty. But there was always more wheat then they could carry. So the wheat that fell from their shoulders as they were carrying it back from the field – that was for the rest of the people, the one's who didn't have farms or fields, they could come in and pick it up for themselves."

Prescott looked up again, calmer, and took a moment to reflect.

"The Bible is a hoax, Levine. It's a pagan religion that disservices the spirit of the Founding Fathers."

"Well, sorry. But the point I'm trying to make isn't to convert you. It's about how all the people in this house manage to pay enough to stay here and out of Finkton. There's a lot of people who live in Charity-Post – a lot of them right here in this boarding house… they're always working. And they're always looking for spare hands."

Levine opened the door by a crack and peaked out.

"Is this the same thing you mentioned last time?" Prescott asked. "From that fellow, Barnes?"

"Careful mentioning his name," said Levine, quickly closing the door. "Barnes doesn't live here, but he's got men stationed around the place. They move in and out. Pretty much everyone here has done a job for him at some point or another. But listen, if you want to find something that can get you a nice sum very quickly, you need to find someone who works for Barnes directly."

Levine beckoned to Prescott to come closer, and he spoke again, quietly: "They're not exactly Vox. But they've got friends. Even a few cops. They come around here looking for men for one-time jobs. I've mentioned your name in the past, but I don't know if anything's being offered. It's worth a shot though."

"And you know about this because of bookkeeping?"

"They trade in old currency. From… what do you call it… the Sodom Below. Dollars and cents. Doesn't go through the banks, so unlike Silver Eagles, half of it isn't taxed away to Comstock. That's why you need a separate account for it."

"And how much could I make?"

"I don't set the prices. But if you're paying something in cash, outside the Silver Eagle trade – you're making double the rate in half the time."

Levine opened the door all the way and ushered Prescott out.

"Go to the parlor downstairs," said Levine, "And find someone who catches your eye. Tell them I vouched for you. If you're lucky some of them might recognize you. They could use a Founder to get into some hard places."

With that, Levine closed the door and Prescott heard the lock click into place behind him. Downstairs, the parlor wasn't exactly bustling. A few men were scattered about the room, most of them sitting in the rickety chairs that covered most of the floor. A girl was in the corner, who couldn't be older than nineteen, with a face so sunken in she could've been mistaken for a spinster. Prescott wondered if she might be a prostitute. He had heard that Charity-Post was open to all sorts of business, especially the kinds that most of Columbia wouldn't tolerate. The girl started coughing and Prescott worried that she might have something contagious. He made sure to stay on the opposite side of the parlor, and sat down next to a man with a thick red moustache, who was sorting through a large, leather satchel.

"Hello there," said the man, before Prescott could say anything. "You're Levine's man, right? You interested in Vigors?"

"Um…" Prescott mumbled, confused at what to do on the receiving end of his usual routine. "Just work. Levine said I could find a bit of… work down here."

"Work is what we're all about, fella. Look in here." The man eased open his satchel. Prescott noticed something glowing a dim, sickly orange inside. "Vigors. Cheap, injectable, and long lasting. You no longer need to worry about affording the fancy drinkable kinds."

"How did you even make these?"

"I didn't make them, fella. They're experiments that Fink throughout. At first he thought he could make Vigors cheap by making them injectable, but then he realized he could fix the price again. Anyway, I've got stuff that'll turn your head around. Shoot fire from your hands, let the wind out of you, play a machine like a piano. Why I've got one in here that'll let you look right into a shimmer! Peak through and glimpse what no man has seen before: what's on the other side of those uncanny mysteries that float in the air."

In spite of the hard sale, Prescott had doubts about this man. He seemed like a small fish in the ocean, too similar to the loner Prescott himself was. And, like most salesmen, far too desperate to bring anyone along.

"So, what do you say?" he asked Prescott. "Interested in buying?"

"I'm afraid of needles," said Prescott. "And besides, I told you, I'm looking for work."

"Can't give you that one. I'm a one-man operation. There's too many sharks out there for me to be a team player."

Prescott felt his stomach cramp. He was horribly out of his depth, he already knew, but it grew worse as he started to realize that those below him still had a swagger and step above. He was he anymore, in this city he had grown up in? Just another mediocrity? The kind of waste of space even the low-lives didn't have time for?

Then Prescott noticed the man at the phone. Just outside the parlor, separated by a frame for a door rather than a piece of wood, stood a man dressed long, wrinkled coat that hung open to show a loose-hanging necktie. What stood out about him to Prescott was that this man didn't pace or budge as he spoke on the phone. He was so still that Prescott hadn't even noticed him at first. He knew he couldn't ask directly if he worked for Barnes. But Prescott was still a salesman. He knew about sizing people up. And this fellow looked too clean, too in control and focused to be in a place like this simply because of misfortune.

"Excuse me," said Prescott to the man who offered him the Vigors. "Who is that man on the phone?"

"Everett?" he said. "He's a boarder, you fool. Why do you think he's here?"

"You know what I mean. Is he a man in need of labor?"

"I don't follow."

"Is a man… who believes in labor?"

"Oh…" The man grinned at Prescott. "Just you wait."

"Grady?" Everett had gotten off the phone and was now standing over the two of them. "Who's your customer?"

Despite his clean appearance and pale face, Everett had dark eyes. They were the kind that were not merely dark in coloration, but even in the whites surrounding his irises, was a shadow in the soul, the kind acquired by a man who had seen it all.

"He's a customer," said Grady. "You can talk around him. He's buying from anyone."

Everett's expression didn't change, but Prescott stood up and stuck out his hand. Everett didn't bother taking it, but he didn't smack it away either, which Prescott thought was promising. Formalities obviously weren't a part of the language where he was looking.

"Are you the one Levine was talking about?" asked Everett.

"I can't say what he's said about me," said Prescott.

"He was just talking about someone, straight and narrow, someone who wouldn't stand out in a crowd. Not to be disrespectful. Sometimes that's a good thing."

The clock struck six and Everett finally made a face other than concentration. Now he seemed irritated. "I'm on a bit of a tight schedule," he said. "So tell me about yourself in three sentences."

"Well, I work as a salesman," said Prescott, bounding into it without thinking. "I-I'm willing to be paid in whatever currency you think is best. And I follow instructions really well."

"All good," said Everett. "What my partner and I really need is a man who can keep a level head and who doesn't stand out. You see, in my line of work, people occasionally attract some heat, if you get what I mean. So, the man I work for likes us to bring on some freelance. Folks who are a bit colder."

Everett stuck finally stuck out his hand.

"One last question though," he said, "Comstock and Fink have the loudest voices in this city. Are you interested in having your own voice?"

As Everett pulled out the syllable on that last word, Prescott slowly recalled the equivalent word in Latin. And, swallowing his pride, he reached out for Everett's hand, grasping it as gently as he thought appropriate, and shook.

"I would like for everyone to have a voice," said Prescott.

Outside the boarding house, another man, he presumed Everett's partner, was waiting by a car attached to an Automated Stallion. The cart was labeled with an off-brand version of the milk service pulled by Easton & Son's. Prescott thought of asking where they hag gotten an Automated Stallion off the legitimate market, but also worried that asking too many questions might lose him the job.

"This is our recruit?" asked Everett's partner. Everett's partner had green eyes, but they were still dark in the same way Everett's were. Prescott started to wonder if this was something all the Vox Populi had.

"Levine mentioned once or twice," said Everett, and the three of them got into the cart. The last of daylight disappeared over the tops of buildings as the men rode out of Charity-Post. Everett stayed quiet while his partner explained the job. They were headed to The Salty Oyster, a restaurant in Emporia, which Prescott had long avoided. It was a simple job: a pick up. A waitress at the Oyster had something their boss wanted, but she, Everett, and Everett's partner had too much heat on them to be seen making any kind of exchange. Prescott had to pick up the package from the waitress.

"I'll be in the Oyster at another table," said Everett's partner. "It's nothing personal, but our business isn't built on trust. It works because we all watch each other. A hundred little Comstocks. The waitress will now it's you by the code: Fontaine."

From there, Prescott would exit after having a drink or two, so nothing would seem suspicious and take the package to East Sparrow Street. He'd pass it to Everett and get his money.

"We're paying you in old currency," said Everett. "From the Sodom Below. That's how we pay everyone. Can't have Comstock's Silver Eagles getting traced back to us on ledgers. What is it you're paying for?"

"A lease on my house. And a big pile of debt."

"You can trade it for Silver Eagles under the table just about anywhere in the city. You'll get to keep the full price, and take it to the bank later. By that point it's dark money. No one will notice."

Everett's partner let out a little sigh. "There's nothing like a pile of debt to push a man. I don't even think you can call any kind of debt a pile. It's more like a hole. No matter the size, everything you do and everything you have just falls back down into it. And sooner or later, the last thing falling into that hole is you. I sometimes wonder if even if you get out of it, the hole's still there. Whatever you had to do to make it the debt vanish, the hole's still there, but now it's in you."

"Will you cut that out?" snapped Everett. "You're gonna scare him off the job."

"I'm being honest. We have to do a lot of unseemly things so we can win it in the long run. Being honest with ourselves is the only way to remind us that we're in the right. Anyway, we're here."

Everett motioned to Prescott to open the door, and the three men stepped out into a bright alley. The Salty Oyster was across the street, its signs glowing like the marquee on a theater.

"Never pull up in front if you don't wanna get noticed," said Everett.

"Come on," said Everett's partner. Prescott followed, and tried pulling his shoulders back to appear less out of his element. He had played a lot of roles since becoming an independent salesman, but pretending to be at ease on a night out was not one of them. All of a sudden, he realized that he had left his briefcase in the parlor of the boarding house. It was as though he had already signed the papers, declaring that he wasn't turning back.

"Take any of the three tables beneath Sally," said Everett's partner. "The waitress' name is Buttercup. Once she hears 'Fontaine' she'll know you're our man."

"And where will you be?"

"On the other side. Don't worry. You won't be able to see me, but I'll be able to see you. Remember: when Buttercup asks what you'll have to drink, ask for a Fontaine."

Before Prescott could ask why that was necessary, they had opened the doors and entered the main chamber of the Salty Oyster. As Prescott took in his surroundings, Everett's partner vanished and reappeared on the far on the side of the room, on the other side of the bar, which jutted out into the center of the restaurant. Flustered, Prescott glanced around nervously, trying to keep track of the names Everett's partner had dropped in his lap. Go and sit underneath Buttercup and ask for a Fontaine? No, ask for a Buttercup and sit underneath Sally? How could he sit underneath Sally? Prescott had always been terrible with names. He strolled over to his left, and felt something familiar through his shoes. In large boxes of block and white, the floor was covered in Future Floor-tiling. Fink's variety. Slightly repulsed, Prescott forced his gaze ahead. And directly before, hanging on the wall, was Sally: illustrated in black and white, in fluffy hat a dress that did not conceal nearly enough of her legs. Prescott swallowed his pride and took a seat.

Before long, a waitress was at his table.

"Good evening, sir. My name is Buttercup and I hope that I've found you at the end of a pleasant day." Buttercup spoke with a jaunt, but wore a face that gave off the impression she'd rather be at the doctor's. She slid a menu onto his table

"Pleasant enough," said Prescott.

"Would you like to start off with something to drink?"

"Uh…" Prescott wracked his brain for the code. Did it start with an 'H?' "What's on-on the menu?" he asked, trying to stall for time.

"Now don't be silly, sir. I just gave you the menu."

"Oh… um…"

The jaunty tone in Buttercup's voice had started to fade, and her face grew harsher.

"It's… I'd like… do you have…"

Buttercup started to turn around. "Maybe I'll just come back when you've had a moment to-"

"Fontaine." Prescott shrunk back realizing he said it a bit too loudly. Thankfully, no one was at the adjacent tables. "I'd like a Fontaine," he said again, quieter.

Buttercup said nothing at first, but her glare turned into something a bit more careful, like she knew she was getting off work sooner than expected.

"That isn't on the menu," she said. "But I can check in the back. It just might take a while. Might I recommend having some water first?"

Prescott nodded. Several glasses of water came to his table, one after the other, delivered by Buttercup, who each time informed him that she was still looking for Fontaine in the back. After the third glass, the intervals became longer, and Prescott entertained himself by tuning his ear to the radio next to the bar. He could make out the melody of "God Only Knows" just below the hum of the crowd, which grew as the night went later. Prescott noticed there was a clock over the bar: eight o'clock. Angelica was probably wondering where he was.

"Sir, I think I've found what you were looking for," said Buttercup, upon returning to the table. "I can't be sure though. Would you mind coming with me to the back?"

Prescott nodded and followed her through the double doors that led into the kitchen. In the kitchen, Prescott was greeted by a whole crew of black faces – more than he had ever seen before in his life – and nearly screeched, before realizing they were too occupied with preparing the dishes to notice him.

"Well, I know you're not a member of the Vox," said Buttercup, as they exited the kitchen and moved down a staircase. "Judging by your reaction to our staff."

"I don't have a problem or a prejudice in the matter," said Prescott. "I just never thought their kind would be in a kitchen in this part of town."

" _Our kind_ work in every restaurant in town," said Buttercup, and Prescott realized that the curls in her hair were the tightest he had ever seen on a white-looking girl.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Buttercup took Prescott's hand to guide him through a dark room. He felt something wet underneath his feet. By the time his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Buttercup was shoving something large into his eyes.

"It's a satchel," she said, and Prescott heard the sound of zipper moving just over his hands. "Once you're in the light, _do not_ open it. For anything. You're a middleman in this operation. This is for Vox and our allies' eyes only."

Moonlight flooded into the room as Buttercup opened a door to the outside. It wasn't exactly a wine cellar, but there were quite a number of barrels stuffed into the corner.

"Well, go!" Buttercup nudged him out into the night, and for what must have been the fiftieth time on this day, Matthew Prescott found a door slammed in his face, and prayed it would be the last instance in a long time. He hoisted the satchel over his shoulder. As he did, he heard a clinking sound – a few of them – from inside. He couldn't tell if it were metal, glass, or one against the other. But he had to stop asking questions. He did none of this for curiosity. He told himself, out-loud and under his breath, that he had not one inkling to know what the Vox Populi were up to, where the men he had partnered with had been radicalized, how this half-bred waitress had managed to pass as a white girl and still be part of this red menace, or any matter of the social ills that rich bleeding-hearts of Emporia felt needed to be addressed. He walked and walked and walked and by the time he reached East Sparrow Street, he only knew that regardless of all the streams he stepped in on this mad day, he was going to come back safe and secure as Matthew Prescott.

Up along the corner, he could see a man in a coat walking toward him. The man strolled into the glow of a streetlamp. It was Everett. Prescott eased the satchel off his shoulder, and hung it carefully to his side like a briefcase. Finally, they crossed paths, and he let the satchel slide out of grasp and fall into Everett's. Prescott stopped, but Everett kept walking, not even bothering to say a word. Then Prescott realized there was something in his pocket, something Everett had plopped in there so easily he hadn't noticed at first. Picking up his pace again, he pulled an envelope into his eyes. Underneath its smooth confines, he felt the rustle of paper money, and, turning the corner let out a deep sigh of relief. For five glorious blocks, Prescott had not a worry in the world. He decided not to envelope at first, and put it back in his pocket. He would savor the surprise for when he was home in bed, and could end this miserable day away from the Vox, from prostitutes over in Charity-Post, from having to worry about the poor plight of Jews and Negroes and their mixed children, and could find some security and delight even as he lay next to that useless wife of his.

Just as he approached turned the corner, Prescott caught a glimpse of a familiar, uncanny astonishment. Up above the tallest building on opposite side of the road, a shimmer was floating in the haze. More accurately, it leaked a haze around it. Prescott, like most Columbians, struggled to find the words to describe it. Shimmers had persistently appeared and reappeared over the last five years; some high in above the heads, others nestled between trees in the park. A minor scandal had emerged when an older couple found one that lasted for three days in their kitchen, and Columbia's greatest scientific mind – the one and only Lutece – had refused to offer an explanation. Since the populace had taken to calling them shimmers, containing their mystery and confounding dimensions within that word, it had been hard to describe them afresh. The one before him was like all the others: glowing the same shade of white, whether night or day, as a hazy ripple seemed to leak from its center. Prescott thought they almost looked like scars: wounds in the air itself that had been hastily sewn up. And for the oddest part of all, as Prescott continued down the block, tilting his neck to view the shimmer from another angle, it disappeared. It wasn't gone of course – he just couldn't see it from the new angle. He remembered that they posed no threat beside their curiosity. Shimmers appeared in the world, looking almost like holes, but led to nothing on the other side, as though they were in between spaces. Certainly a pleasant view though, Prescott thought, and carried on, not recalling that some thought of them as bad omens.

Rounding another corner, he noticed two policemen, just standing there.

"Evening officers," he said, almost at ease.

"Just stop right there, fella," said one of the policemen.

"What is it?"

The policemen glanced at each other and one of them snapped handcuffs off his belt.

"We got a tip off at around six o'clock. There was a deal going on in Emporia that might have involved the False Shepherd."

Prescott didn't know whether to panic or feel relief. Talking to the police was the last thing he needed know, but at least he had innocence in this.

"I wouldn't know anything about that," said Prescott.

"Just let as do a search."

Before Prescott could object, the police were funneling through his pockets. As they pulled the envelope out, Prescott saw two more policemen arrive on the scene.

"Why are there more cops?"

"We get tips, but we also get Father Comstock's visions. Something big was happening on this street tonight."

"Well, you can be sure it wasn't me. I'm just a salesman."

The policeman tore open the envelope by one side. The paper money nearly fell out all at once.

"It's not illegal to own old currency, is it?" Prescott asked, feeling himself start to sweat again. "Some folks like to pay in that stuff. It's not a crime to sell to Irish, is it? Or to Jews?"

"No," said the policeman, as his cohorts surrounded Prescott. "But this is something you can't buy or sell."

The policeman pulled a small piece of what looked like scrap paper from the wad of money and held it up to his eyes. He turned it around in his hand, and then thrust it right in Prescott's face.

"Where'd you get this?!"

In faded black and white, Prescott saw that it was a picture of a girl. She looked about fourteen, facing away from the camera with a giant bow in the back of her dark hair. Scrawled in the corner of the photograph, Prescott read: **ELIZABETH**. The policeman turned the photograph over, so he could see what was written on the back: **BRING TO NEW YORK UNHARMED.**

"Who is that?" asked Prescott

"Don't be a fool," said another policeman.

"It'll only make things worse," added another.

They tugged Prescott backward and the cuffs tightened around his wrists.

"But I didn't do anything!" he said. "I'm just a patsy! Fell into the wrong place! I didn't know who the guy who paid me that even was! It must him you're looking for."

"You got a name for us then?"

"Yeah, it's…" Prescott's mind went blank. "I-I can't remember! Wait, give me a moment." He tried wracking his brain, like he had back at the Salty Oyster, but the police were overwhelming him, making it harder to think. Shorter of breath, he still tried to call out as one of them started pulling him away. "I'm not the man you want! I haven't done anything to lie or cheat! I'm not like the others!" cried Prescott, his voice hoarse and creaky. "I've been good!"

With the satchel slung gently over his shoulder, Everett left Emporia behind. He pricked up his ears. No one was following him. To be sure, he circled the block twice, keeping his pace irregular, before entering the big man's building. Once he was inside, he came to the foot of the stairs and saw a man waiting at the top.

"You got it after all," said Barnes, coming into the dim light and showing his jovial face, blotted with stains of purple. "And nothing went wrong?"

"We were scared at first," said Everett, "when we learned about the shimmer. Comstock may not be a prophet, but he's got eyes on those things, somehow. We found someone to take the heat off for a while. Some poor fall guy."

"Excellent," said Barnes, taking the satchel. "Do you think he deserved it?"

"Didn't know him long enough to say. But it's never bothered me before either way."

"I may need a fur coat with how cold you are, Everett."

"So, is this good enough to get me a meeting with Fitzroy?"

Barnes unzipped the bag. The electric light glinted off the gyres of fifteen Sky-Hooks.

"Oh, this is precisely what'll get you closer," he said. "If you really want to meet Fitzroy, you could just go and join the Vox."

"I'm not here for a revolution. I'm here to arrange a deal. I've got a job bigger than anything you've put me on, and I need manpower."

"Well, I'll put in a word, see how long it takes. You want one?"

Barnes gestured to the bag of Sky-Hooks.

"Already have one. It's how I move around this place."

Everett turned around and was about to walk out the door when Barnes called out.

"Hold on. Before you go… this might be the last time I see you and I always wanted to ask. Which war was it? Boxer Rebellion? Something on the plains?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your hand. I know what a knife wound looks like."

Everett held out his right hand, upward so it could be seen clearly in the electric light. In the dark it seemed normal, but a closer look showed the mangled skin, stretched over itself and stitched back together, like the craggy side of a mountain. From the scar tissue at its center, black lines emanated, some stitches, some almost like ink and blood whirling into each other, as his fingers twitched. All but too of them had lost the ability to stretch, as the nerves connecting them had been damaged.

"Which war," said the man with the false name, "I've been through all the wars. I'm still in one."

With his mangled hand, Booker DeWitt waved goodbye to Barnes, and went back out into the night, and down the streets back to Charity-Post.


End file.
